Demirkesen, S; Sadikoglu, E and Jayamanne, E (2021) Assessing psychological safety in lean construction projects in the United States. Construction Economics and Building, 21(3), pp. 159-175. ISSN 2204-9029
Abstract
The construction industry is hazardous, which requires careful consideration of occupational health and safety measures. Among various strategies that are proposed to enhance construction safety, Lean construction practices were widely implied and proved to be effective. However, the link between Lean implementation and construction safety has not been completely studied yet in previous research in terms of psychological safety context. This study implies that psychological safety is of utmost importance in terms of explaining the association between Lean and safety. Lean implementation elements such as respect for people, trust, leadership, and continuous improvement positively affect employees' psychological safety. In this context, semi-structured interviews and a survey were conducted with employees working in U.S. construction companies. The interviews provided that the majority of the construction employees do not feel psychologically safe at their workplaces either in traditional or Lean construction projects due to a number of reasons such as heavy workload, and deadline pressures. However, it was found that construction workers feel safer psychologically in Lean construction projects compared to traditional projects. According to the interview results and literature review, a conceptual model was proposed. Therefore, this study can contribute to the research area of psychological safety in the construction industry.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | lean construction; psychological safety; construction safety; continuous improvement; respect for people |
| Index terms: | construction worker, construction safety, construction industry, implementation, respect for people, psychological safety, literature review, strategy, construction employee, continuous improvement, occupational health and safety, workload, survey, construction company, interview, lean construction, United States |
| Subjects: | performance measurement, management, Geography, building construction, occupational health and safety management, environmental health, industry analysis, organization, data collection methods, practitioner, contractual arrangements, data analysis and analytics, ethical practice |
| Topics: | Business Strategy, Health and Safety, Research Practice, Geographical Context, Roles and Professions, Procurement, Sustainability, Quality Management, Human Resources, Site 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