Opoku, A; Zhao, S; Lok, K L; Chen, C and Umar, T (2020) Promoting employee safety performance in the Chinese construction industry. In: Scott, L and Neilson, C J (eds.) Proceedings of 36th Annual ARCOM Conference, 7-8 September 2020, Online Event, UK.
Abstract
In the construction industry, safety leadership has been widely recognised as an indispensable factor that affects organisational safety performance. However, in China specifically, research on safety leadership in the construction domain is not adequately developed. Relatively little empirical research has taken safety leadership to be a multidimensional variable that needs to be studied in order to understand how the different dimensions affect safety behaviour. Accordingly, this study identifies five safety leadership practices and establishes hypotheses to examine the role of organisational leadership in promoting safety performance, as moderated by safety climate. The study adopts a quantitative research approach through a questionnaire survey with 106 construction professionals leading or participating in safety management work in the Chinese construction sectors. The results show that exerting certain leadership strategies that encourage construction stakeholders to comply with safety practices will improve safety performance. Five safety practices that leaders can execute to ameliorate safety performance are discussed. At a moment when the whole industry is suffering from momentous safety challenges, transformation is required; these findings are intended to guide construction managers in their commitment to project safety management. The study proposes measures to enhance safety performance through top-down organisational health and safety (OHS) practices.
| Item Type: | Conference Paper (Paper) |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | safety leadership; safety performance; safety climate; Chinese construction industry |
| Index terms: | construction manager, questionnaire, construction professional, safety performance, construction industry, China, dimension, safety management, construction sector, safety leadership, quantitative research, safety climate, health and safety, transformation, survey, safety behaviour, commitment, strategy |
| Subjects: | industry analysis, occupational health and safety management, professional development, health safety and environment, Geography, management, health monitoring assessment and metrics, data analysis and analytics, psychology, business, profession, data collection methods |
| Topics: | Health and Safety, Business Strategy, Information Management, Geographical Context, Research Practice, Roles and Professions, Organizational Design |
| 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