Marton, J and Richter, A (2004) In search of safety on construction sites -implications of culture, organizational structures and structural change on safety. In: Khosrowshahi, F (ed.) Proceedings of 20th Annual ARCOM Conference, 1-3 September 2004, Edinburgh, UK.
Abstract
The Danish construction industry is presently confronted with societal and market challenges concerning cost reduction, productivity issues and quite high rates of occupational accidents. Conforming to changing project organizations and work strategies, construction standards and meeting owner specific safety requirements has become a divers challenge for contractor companies. How contractors' organizational structure relates to these features and what are their implications for safety and safety culture on the sites is the focus of this paper. Drawing on symbolic, interactionist conception of organizational and safety culture and sociological institutional theory the presented research covers two qualitative studies seeking to get a deeper understanding of these relations, barriers to and conditions under which safer work environments could be established. Whilst one investigation follows the implications of work strategy restructuring on the site and of the applied environmental management procedures for safety and safety behavior, the other case relates about safety implications of the integrated safety culture, safety practices and more or less explicit safety management policies of a progressive contractor company. The results point out, that centrally issued safety policies and systems may be conceived ambiguous or of limited effect when related to prioritizing goals of the built project and because of traditions in the daily work practices. Approaches, oriented at intensified site communication, learning and participative processes, sating emphasis on a greater horizontally integration of safety, seem to be more promising.
| Item Type: | Conference Paper (Paper) |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | construction sites; horizontal integration; safety culture; safety management policies; structural change |
| Index terms: | project organization, safety behaviour, productivity, drawing, owner, strategy, construction site, qualitative study, organizational structure, prioritizing, institutional theory, construction standard, safety culture, cost reduction, environmental management, construction industry, safety management, investigation, work environment, occupational accident, integration, work practice |
| Subjects: | organizational theory, health safety and environment, management, sustainability assessment, health risk and incident analysis, economics, industry analysis, organizational analysis, occupational health and safety management, sociology, decision analysis, data collection methods, research design and methodology, standards, work location, technical documentation |
| Topics: | Business Strategy, Cost Management, Health and Safety, Research Practice, Project Management, Risk Management, Stakeholder Management, Sustainability, Legal Issues, Design Practice, Organizational Design, Site Management |
| Descriptive scope: | 4 PCTA |
N.B. Descriptive scope is a count of how many of the five facets of empirical research are indicated by the words used in title, abstract and keywords. It is not intended as a judgement on the research; merely a count of the kind of word we would expect to indicate Phenomenon, Concepts, Theoretical framing, Empirical techniques, Analytical techniques. If all five are present, then a code of “5 PCTEA” will indicate this. If you feel the coding for this record is questionable, we welcome discussion around the terms we matched or the way we categorized them. The facet you would expect may not be coded, or a facet may be coded inappropriately. This can also bear on a larger question, of which facets should be treated as defining in construction management research. Please get in touch, and we will look at it. More details here