Xia, N; Tang, Y; Li, D and Pan, A (2021) Safety behavior among construction workers: Influences of personality and leadership. Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, 147(4): 04021019, ISSN 0733-9364
Abstract
This study investigated whether the relationships of personality with safety compliance and safety participation remains significant when safety-specific transformational leadership is supplied by supervisors. It also tested the moderating role of this leadership in the personality-safety behavior relationship. One hundred twenty workers completed the Big Five personality test and graded their supervisors' leadership, and the workers' safety behavior was assessed by the supervisors. The results showed that conscientiousness was related positively with safety compliance. Contrary to our theorizing, agreeableness was related negatively with safety compliance. Leadership always positively related to safety compliance and participation, and it also attenuated the relationships of conscientiousness and agreeableness with safety compliance. This enhances the importance of considering safety leadership as an antecedent and intervention of employee safety behavior. However, conscientiousness and agreeableness remained related with safety compliance when safety leadership was considered simultaneously. These findings expand the limited research on the personality-safety behavior relationship in the construction field. Evaluating conscientiousness and agreeableness prior to recruitment can enable employers proactively to curtail unacceptable safety transgressions. Enhancing supervisors' safety leadership helps to prevent employees from performing safety-related actions that are subject to individual dispositions.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | personality traits; safety compliance; safety participation; safety transformational leadership |
| Index terms: | safety leadership, theorizing, compliance, recruitment, transformational leadership, construction worker, supervisor, safety behaviour, personality |
| Subjects: | behavioral psychology, occupational health and safety management, health safety and environment, management, data science, practitioner |
| Topics: | Organizational Design, Human Resources, Roles and Professions, Health and Safety, Research Practice |
| Descriptive scope: | 3 PCA |
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