Safety behaviour and culture in construction

Dester, W S and Blockley, D I (1995) Safety behaviour and culture in construction. Engineering, Construction and Architectural Management, 2(1), pp. 17-26. ISSN 0969-9988

Abstract

The construction industry has a poor safety record. There is a common perception that this is because it is an inherently dangerous industry. It is suggested that the industry would be better characterized as one with a poor safety culture and that attempts to improve the safety record will not be fully effective until the safety culture is improved. The relationship between unsafe behaviour and safety culture is discussed together with the difficulties of assessing and managing safety culture. Some of the influences on safety culture in construction are described. The initiative to develop an improvement in the safety culture of construction needs to come from within the industry through a genuine commitment to safety.

Item Type: Article
Uncontrolled Keywords: behaviour; culture; health and safety; safety
Index terms: safety culture, safety behaviour, construction industry, culture in construction, health and safety, unsafe behaviour, commitment
Subjects: health safety and environment, financial risk, industry analysis, occupational health and safety management, sociology, psychology
Topics: Cost Management, Health and Safety, Research Practice, Organizational Design
Descriptive scope: 2 CT

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