Szabo, E; Hansen, H and Sherratt, F (2023) Making the complicated simple? The case of construction safety culture. In: Tutesigensi, A and Neilson, C J (eds.) Proceedings of 39th Annual ARCOM Conference, 4-6 September 2023, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK.
Abstract
The construction industry has yet to find a comfortable home for safety culture within wider safety management operations. With myriad definitions, proprietary assessment tools, and maturity models available, practical application can be confusing and challenging. Yet regulators in the USA have begun to demand formal reporting of safety culture as part of licensing procedures, repositioning it as a top priority for firms to operationalize. Thus, whilst academic safety culture is developing ever-more complex conceptualizations and frameworks, industry is seeking a simpler, more utilizable version for practice. To take a meaningful step forward in this space, a focus group of industry safety professionals (n=28) participated in a Q-Methodology workshop to unpack the current extensional definitions of safety culture, prioritizing, and evaluating the various elements therein. Findings show that the most important components are those that are also the hardest to measure, such as commitment and leadership. Suggestions for alternative metrics, such as financial commitment could reveal alternative routes for evidence-based rather than opinion-based determinations of culture in the future.
| Item Type: | Conference Paper (Paper) |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | safety culture; measurement; regulation; reporting. |
| Index terms: | regulator, licensing, commitment, maturity model, workshop, focus group, prioritizing, safety culture, construction safety, safety management, construction industry, evidence, regulation, methodology |
| Subjects: | health safety and environment, evaluation, research methods, industry analysis, environmental health, political science, occupational health and safety management, decision analysis, sociology, knowledge transfer, data collection methods, evaluation and assessment methods, construction type, psychology |
| Topics: | Organizational Design, Digital Applications, Construction Technology, Sustainability, Governance, Risk Management, Stakeholder Management, Research Practice, Health and Safety |
| 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