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Question:
Collect all the models and mapping all conceptual and empirical models in construction industry in safety science and safety research from 2000 to 2012
Answer:
Contents
Partnerships and resources; processes; and goals. 8
The balanced scorecard model 9
Zohar’s safety climate model 11
Introduction
One of the most discussed themes in the construction industry is the culture of organizational safety. The construction industry in the contemporary world is fraught with numerous safety-related issues. It is therefore imperative that adequate measures are put in place to address emerging safety challenges. For such safety issues to be addressed in the appropriate manner, an organizational manager in charge of safety matters should put in place a safety policy that clearly establishes the goals to be achieved. According to Mohamed (2003), the perspectives to be put into consideration in this case include management, customer, operational, and learning.
In the scholarly world, there is abundant literature on the various models relating to the construction industry as far as safety research and theory is concerned. For instance, Mohamed, Ali, Tam (2009) developed the three-factor model for describing the relationship between the attitudes and perceptions of workers and the occurrence of safety risks. This paper discusses all the conceptual and empirical models for safety in construction industry 2000 and 2012.
Three-factor model
The three-factor model focuses primarily on the behavior of workers in the construction industry (Mohamed, Ali, Tam, 2009). It examines how their behavior influences the frequency with which accidents occur in construction-work settings. It is conventionally believed that there is an intrinsic association between unsafe behavior and accidents in the workplace. When workers promote safe behavior, safety climate is achieved in construction sites (Glendon & Litherland, 2001). By extension, the perception of risk among construction workers influences their attitudes towards safety. Other factors influencing these attitudes include safety procedures and rules as well as management.
According to Mohamed, Ali, Tam (2009), aspects of national culture have an influence on safe work behavior among construction workers. In countries where there is little or no emphasis in the enforcement of far-reaching safety regulations, there are higher safety risks (Mohamed, Ali, Tam, 2009). The three factors identified in the three-factor model include awareness and beliefs; physical work environment; and supportive environment (Mohamed, Ali, Tam, 2009).
The factor on awareness and beliefs covers aspects such as the willingness by some workers to work in an environment where some element of risk is involved. Indeed, some workers relish working in situations where they continually come face-to-face with some safety risks. On the other hand, other employees strongly hold the view that improved production is greatly improved through safe work habits. In yet another example, it is true that the ability to identify potentially hazardous situations differs from one individual to the other. To this extent, it is evident that the factor on awareness and beliefs has a lot to do with the predisposition of the worker.
The factor on physical work environment addresses the dangers that lurk in the work environment. For instance, some construction sites are inherently dangerous places. In such places, most employees tend to live in constant fear of being injured or dying. The workplace may be dangerous for a variety of reasons. For instance, the employer may have refused to provide the workers with the right equipment for enabling them carry out their day-to-day workplace activities in a safe environment. In other instances, the materials may have been supplied but have since ceased to be in a good working condition. The factor on the physical work environment seems to shoulder the greatest responsibility on the employer or construction site manager.
In the third factor, that of supporting environment, one of the most crucial elements is safety training. According to Mohamed, Ali, Tam (2009), it is imperative that safety training is conducted so that construction workers obtain all the skills that are specific to individual equipment and tasks. This is a crucial factor because many workplace accidents occur because the worker either does not know how to perform a specific task or is not skilled in using specific equipment to perform the task. Most of the potential risks as well as consequences are normally identified during the training process. In this factor, responsibility is shouldered on everyone involved in the construction work, including employers and employees. Emphasis is on good working relations between the worker and the construction manager as well as among the workers themselves.
Safety culture model
The safety culture model covers a wider scope than the three-factor model. In additional to behavioral factors, it also accommodates psychological, perceptional, and managerial factors (Choudhry, Fang, & Mohamed, 2007). This wider scope has contributed to a rapid increase in the model’s popularity. Another factor contributing to its popularity is the fact that it is firmly rooted in academic and applied literature (Choudhry, Fang, & Mohamed, 2007). However, this popularity is increasingly being overshadowed by the lack of a standardized verifiable process for analyzing aspects of construction safety culture (Mohamed, 2011).
To understand the concept of “safety culture” this model reaches out to the meanings of other distinct by inherently related concepts such as behavior-based safety, safety climate, and safety system (Clissold, 2004). Through reference to applied literature, this model qualifies to be one of the most appropriate frameworks for mapping the relationship between safety and construction site environments (Choudhry, Fang, & Mohamed, 2007).
In this model, one of the core issues relates to ways of assessing safety culture. This issue has caused disagreements regarding the most appropriate definition of the concept (Choudhry, Fang, & Mohamed, 2007). One of the definitions provided is that safety culture is the product of attitudes, perceptions, patterns of behavior, competencies, and values that influence the style, proficiency, and commitment to safety and health management within an organization (Choudhry, Fang, & Mohamed, 2007). Most of the ideas contained in other related definitions of the term are similar in respect to the way they discuss people’s behavior or ways of thinking in relation to safety in the construction industry (Teo, 2005). Moreover, there is consensus that the best way to inculcate the right safety culture is to take a proactive stance. In fact, the notion of proactive stance seems to have been universally accepted though not always practiced.
In the safety culture model, the term “safety culture” is defined as a summary of the perceptions shared by employees regarding their work environment (Wright, 2001). In this regard, it is viewed as a subcomponent of organizational culture. Behavior-based safety, on the other hand, is the systematic application of aspects of research in psychology on human behavior. Researchers have the option of adopting either the data-driven or the analytic approach. In this undertaking, critical behaviors are identified and subsequently targeted with the aim of bringing about change (Choudhry, Fang, & Mohamed, 2007).
Structural equation model
One of the main reasons for the development of the structural equation model was the lack of sufficient empirical validation of the key enablers of safety culture in the construction industry. Indeed, the lack of a safety culture is the main cause of a poor safety record in this industry. In this model, most of the emphasis is on the interrelatedness between key enablers of safety culture.
According to Chinda & Mohamed (2008), an outstanding contribution of the structural equation model is that it provides insights into interactions among various enablers of safety culture as well as the relationship between those enablers and the goals of safety culture. In the relationships between enablers, focus is on what various organizations are doing. In the issue of safety culture goals, the discussion addresses the goals and objectives that specific organizations aim to achieve.
In one of the most authoritative works that contribute to the structural equation model, Chinda & Mohamed (2008) focus solely on the improvements required in the enablers’ criteria with the aim of achieving better results. This explains the rationale for the combination of four “results” criteria into one construct called goals. The first criterion is leadership. Leadership drives the other three criteria; namely people; partnerships and resources; and policy and strategy.
The combination of these three enablers collectively exerts influence on the ability by the organization to achieve predetermined goals. Safety outcomes constitute the specific set of goals outlined in this regard (Wong & Cheung, 2005). These goals are achieved when suitable processes are implemented and improved. This explains the rationale for establishing six theoretical constructs comprising of five enablers and the singular component of organizational goals. These constructs are a representation of the core elements of the structural equation model.
According to Chinda & Mohamed (2008), the leadership enabler has a direct influence on the process of implementing policy and strategy. However, it tends to impact indirectly upon partnerships and resources (Chinda & Mohamed, 2008). Chinda & Mohamed (2008) add that partnerships and resources affect processes indirectly through policy and strategy. The same indirect effect is observed with regard to the effect of the “people” enabler on policy and strategy (Chinda & Mohamed, 2008).
Leadership
Leadership is one of the enablers in the structural equation model. Leaders are conventionally expected to develop and facilitate the process of achieving safety-related mission and vision as well as developing the values needed for long-term success. They are expected to implement them through appropriate behaviors and actions. Dea & Flin (2001) point out that for an organization to entrench the appropriate safety culture, there is a need for not just management commitment but also able leadership.
Dea & Flin (2001) add that in the construction industry, leadership is regarded as a critical enabler in the development of an excellent safety culture. According to Lingard & Blismas (2006), there are four core attributes on the basis of which leadership can be examined; namely commitment by top management, management accountability, effective communication, and the tendency by the management to lead by example.
Policy and strategy
Policy and strategy is an enabler that encompasses the way in which the organization actualizes its safety vision through strategies focused on stakeholders and supported by appropriate policies and objectives. Lingard &Blismas (2006) indicate that this enabler comprises of promotion and awareness, safety standards and laws; and alignment of safety targets and productivity. It also entails initiatives for bringing about continual improvement in safety standards as well as the integration of safety within business goal settings (Ahmed, 2004).
People
In the structural equation model, the purpose of the “people” enabler is to facilitate the management and development of knowledge and potential of human resources at both individual and organization-wide level. The model emphasizes the need for activities to be properly planned so that specific strategies and policies are supported. The objective is to ensure that all processes are being operated effectively. Some of the attributes associated with the people enabler in this model include shared perceptions regarding safety, supportive environment, relationships among workers, safety empowerment, work pressure, and workload (Teo & Fang, 2006).
Partnerships and resources; processes; and goals
With regard to partnerships and resources attention is on how organizations carry out planning and management of their external partnerships with stakeholders to implement safety strategies and policies. This enabler is conventionally actualized using attributes such as availability of financial resources, cooperation among project participants, and the availability of safety-enhancing resources (Aksorn & Hadikusumo, 2006).
This enabler is remarkably different from organizational processes. In this component of the structural equation model, emphasis is on the need for the organization to succeed in designing and managing all its processes with the aim of supporting its strategy in a way that satisfies and generates value to all stakeholders. For this goal to be achieved, some of the activities that must take place include site layout planning, site safety documentation, use of environment control strategies, and putting an efficient benchmarking system in place (Suraji, 2001).
Goals
The final component in the structural equation model is goals. When all the attributes highlighted in all the other enablers are implemented in an effective manner, the intended goals are achieved. In terms of safety in the construction industry, the intended goals include reduction in number of accidents, entrenchment of a culture of safe work behavior, improvement in the organization’s safety standards, and reduction in costs arising from accidents (Dejoy, 2004).
In essence, the success of the structural equation model is evidently dependent upon patterns of relationships among various enablers. A strong relationship between various enablers and goals is essential. Similarly, there is a need for interrelationships to be nurtured among the enablers themselves (Chinda & Mohamed, 2008).
The balanced scorecard model
The balanced scorecard (BSC) is one of the tools used for benchmarking safety culture in construction. According to Mohamed (2003), this tool has the potential to supply the much-needed medium for translating the safety policy of an organization into a clearly defined set of goals. Once these goals have been identified, the next challenge is to further translate them into performance measures for effectively communicating issues of strategic safety concern across the organization (Mohamed, 2003).
The uniqueness of the BSC model is that it focuses on integrating the interests of all the key stakeholders, including customers, employees, and owners on a clearly defined scorecard. The rationale is to ensure that a balance is maintained between short-term and long-term goals, between internal and external performance perspectives, and between leading and lagging indicators (Mohamed, 2003).
However, many scholars have pointed out that there is a need to modify the original format of the BSC tool to transform it into a model that can be used for assessing and measuring safety culture within construction organizations (Mohamed, 2003; Ahmed, 2004; Chinda & Mohamed, 2008; Lingard &Blismas, 2006). Instead of providing a measure of just the incident statistics available in a construction, the BSC model provides a value-based, holistic, and balanced report.
However, no empirical evidence is available indicating that the adoption of the BSC brings about superior performance. Nevertheless, if anecdotal evidence is anything to go by, BSC seems to be becoming increasingly popular in various applications, particularly those released in the early 2000s (Mohamed, 2003). It may be necessary for the model to be employed more aggressively in construction, because as things stand today, application in this industry remains limited (Chinda & Mohamed, 2008).
One of the reasons why the model has not been widely applied in construction is the fact that it has not been fully developed for measuring safety culture. The original perspectives of the model are not yet to be put in a completely different light. In its present form, the BSC’s four perspectives; namely customer, management, operational, and learning have been retained, only that slightly different names as well as content have been used to reflect issues of safety in construction.
Moreover, there is emphasis on efforts to bring in the management perspective in efforts to make the BSC model suited to the process of enhancing the existing safety culture or creating a new one. This is a major step forward in the development of this model primarily because efforts to deliberately manipulate various characteristics and activities of organizational management are widely believed to have a far-reaching impact on safety management practices (Mohamed, 2003). Indeed, this goal can be easily achieved as long as management is committed to and continuously involved in safety issues with the underlying goal of promoting safety to a satisfactory level.
Zohar’s safety climate model
Zohar (2000) proposed a group-level model in which focus was on aspects of safety climate. To test this model, Zohar (2000) explored the problem of micro-accidents in the context of manufacturing jobs. In Zohar’s (2000) view, climate perceptions relate first and foremost to supervisory safety practices as opposed to company procedures and policies. Evidently, there is a link between objective injury data in Zohar’s (2000) study and safety climate perceptions.
To expand the model, Zohar (2005) explored the multi-level model, in which focus was on relationships between group-level and organization-level climates. The study’s findings showed a strong global alignment between these two climates (Zohar, 2005). The study also showed that group level climate fully mediates the impact of organization climate on employees safety behavior (Zohar, 2005).
Conclusion
In conclusion, many empirical safety models in construction industry have been established and developed since the year 2000. This paper has attempted to collect and map these models with the aim of highlighting the developments being made as far as safety research in the construction industry is concerned.
The models that this paper has discussed include the three-factor model, safety culture model, structural equation model, the balanced scorecard model, and Zohar’s safety climate model. Of all these models, the structural equation model is the most elaborate in terms of the way its theoretical constructs are defined. Moreover, the way in which the interrelationships between these constructs are defined makes this model seem most appropriate in addressing contemporary safety challenges in the construction industry.
References
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