Gogo, S E (2021) The role of leadership in the transformation of health and safety culture in the South African construction industry. PhD thesis, University of Johannesburg, South Africa.
Abstract
The question of whether a role improvement of top leadership will benefit H&S culture transformation to achieve improved H&S outcomes in the South African construction industry is weighed up against a plethora of literature available on H&S leadership. The interest from many scholars has unequivocally been focused on exploring leadership practices affecting H&S in the middle and lower management, while minimal attention was directed to top leadership, specifically. This is particularly amplified in the South African construction industry, leading to a gap in the body of knowledge for a study that is distinctly directed leadership, explicitly. The primary objective of this study was to investigate the role of organisational leadership by exploring top leadership interventions which will promote an expedient H&S culture transformation in the South African infrastructure construction projects. The study highlighted the criticality aspects of top leadership practices and attitudes, in particular how they link to the H&S outcomes, by relating them to their accident causation potential, based on core decision-making at the strategic levels. A comprehensive literature review was conducted, and the principal output was the hypothesis that the national and industry context has a direct influence on top leadership H&S commitment, while at the same time, this top leadership H&S commitment has a direct positive influence on H&S culture outcomes. Based on these assumptions, a theoretical model directed at strengthening the training and auditing functionality, to enable the contextual competence of the top leaders, was developed. A pragmatic/contextual paradigm was defined, where a mixed, exploratory sequential method was applied to collect and analyse data (i. e. , semi-structured interviews & survey questionnaires). Nonprobability, purposive sampling was applied to top managers in construction contractors on all 9 CIDB levels, then a non-probability convenient followed by probability, random sampling on N=182. The findings on the impact of top leadership commitment demonstrate that top leadership H&S commitment is the driving force behind the success or failure of the organizational H&S effort; therefore, H&S should be given the same level of attention and class as other TMT functions. Also, it is shown that there is very high H&S awareness amongst the top leadership; despite this, H&S commitment from the top leadership still lacks. This lack of H&S commitment from the top leadership is linked to the shortage of knowledge in this area of expertise. From these findings, recommendations which are anchored on the implementation by top leaders, cognizance of culture implications by top leaders, consideration by policy-makers and legislation, theoretical consideration by the body of knowledge and experimental application for researchers were made in detail.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Thesis advisor: | Musonda, I |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | competence; culture; failure; health and safety; infrastructure construction; leadership; legislation; policy; probability; safety; training |
| Index terms: | purposive sampling, implementation, construction industry, paradigm, sampling, transformation, infrastructure construction, construction contractor, body of knowledge, competence, decision-making, strengthening, questionnaire, functionality, literature review, commitment, survey, interview, legislation, health and safety, top manager |
| Subjects: | research methods, structural engineering, health safety and environment, practitioner, design features, psychology, legal systems, knowledge management, contractual arrangements, civil engineering, education and knowledge transfer, personnel development, decision analysis, industry analysis, business, data collection methods, data analysis and analytics |
| Topics: | Human Resources, Design Practice, Organizational Design, Research Practice, Information Management, Business Strategy, Roles and Professions, Legal Issues, Engineering Principles, Health and Safety, Procurement, Risk Management |
| Descriptive scope: | 5 PCTEA |
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