Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-r6qrq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-26T12:51:48.810Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Analysis of a Safety Climate Measure for Occupational Vehicle Drivers and Implications for Safer Workplaces

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 February 2012

Andrew R. Wills ,
Herbert C. Biggs  and
Barry Watson
Andrew R. Wills*
Affiliation:
Queensland University of Technology, Australia
Herbert C. Biggs
Affiliation:
Queensland University of Technology, Australia
Barry Watson
Affiliation:
Queensland University of Technology, Australia
*
Centre for Accident Research and Road Safety — Queensland, School of Psychology and Counselling, QUT, Beams Rd, Carseidine, Qtd 4034, Australia. E-mail: a.uiilb@qut.edu.a
Get access

Abstract

Safety climate, defined as workers' shared perceptions about the importance of safety to their organisation, has received increasing attention as a construct that is useful for benchmarking organisational safety and as a way of measuring the socio-organisational antecedents of safety performance. Few studies have utilised pre-existing safety climate measures and as a result of this, there is limited information about the generalisability of the construct and its underlying dimensions across organisations and industries. This is an important step towards establishing safety climate as a generic organisational construct which can be reliably measured. In those few cases where studies have used existing measures, results indicate inconsistencies in the underlying factor structures. Accordingly, using a sample of 321 employees from three separate organisations and industries, this study examined the factor structure of a modified version of an existing measure (the Safety Climate Questionnaire [SCQ]). Principal components factor analysis revealed that the original factor structure was upheld by the current sample (with the exception of two factors collapsing into one). This provides support for the generic nature of safety climate as it is operationalised by the SCQ. Additional items were included and emerged as two dimensions, providing support for the generalisability of these new factors across the organisations and industries employed. The results are of theoretical and practical significance as they provide evidence for the generic structure of the construct across organisations and industries, and exemplify how a measure of safety climate could be usefully employed in disability management planning and early intervention strategies.

Type
Articles
Information
The Australian Journal of Rehabilitation Counselling , Volume 11 , Issue 1 , January 2005 , pp. 8 - 21
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2005

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Baer, M., & Frese, M. (2002). Innovation is not good enough: Climate for initiative and psychological safety, process innovation, and firm performance. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 24, 45–68.Google Scholar
Brown, R.L., & Holmes, H. (1986). The use of a factor-analytic procedure for assessing the validity of an employee safety climate model. Accident Analysis and Prevention, 18, 455–470.Google Scholar
Cooper, M.D., & Phillips, R.A. (2004). Exploratory analysis of the safety climate and safety behavior relationship. Journal of Safety Research, 35, 497–512.Google Scholar
Cox, S., & Flin, R. (1998). Safety culture: Philosopher's stone or man of straw? Work and Stress, 12, 189–201.Google Scholar
Dejoy, D.M. (1994). Managing safety in the workplace: An attribution theory analysis and model. Journal of Safety Research, 25, 3–17.Google Scholar
Denison, D.R. (1996). What is the difference between organizational culture and organizational climate? A native's point of view on a decade of paradigm wars. Academy of Management Review, 21, 619–655.Google Scholar
Diaz, R.I., & Cabrera, D.D. (1997). Safety climate and attitude as evaluation measures of organizational safety. Accident Analysis and Prevention, 29, 643–650.Google Scholar
Farrington-Darby, T., Pickup, L., & Wilson, J. R. (2005). Safety culture in railway maintenance. Safety Science, 43, 39–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Flin, R., Mearns, K., O'Connor, P., & Bryden, R. (2000). Measuring safety climate: Identifying common features. Safety Science, 34, 177–192Google Scholar
Gillen, M., Baltz, D., Gassel, M., Kirsch, L., & Vaccaro, D. (2002). Perceived safety climate, job demands, and coworker support among union and nonunion injured construction workers. Journal of Safety Research, 33, 33–51.Google Scholar
Glendon, A.I., & Litherland, D.K. (2001). Safety climate factors, group differences, and safety behaviour in road construction. Safety Science, 39, 157–188.Google Scholar
Glendon, A.I., Stanton, N.A., & Harrison, D. (1994). Factor analysing a performance shaping concepts questionnaire. In Robertson, S. A. (Ed.), Contemporary ergonomics 1994: Ergonomics for all. (pp. 340–345). London: Taylor and Francis.Google Scholar
Griffin, M.A., & Neal, A. (2000). Perceptions of safety at work: A framework for linking safety climate to safety performance, knowledge, and motivation. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 5, 347–358.Google Scholar
Guldenmund, F. W. (2000). The nature of safety culture: A review of theory and research. Safety Science, 34, 215–257.Google Scholar
Hair, J.F., Anderson, R.E., Tatham, R.L., & Black, W.C. (1998). Multivariate data analysis (5th ed.). New Jersey: Prentice Hall.Google Scholar
Haworth, N., Tingvall, C., & Kowadlo, N. (2000). Review of best practice road safety initiatives in the corporate and/or business environment (No. 166). Clayton: Monash University Accident Research Centre.Google Scholar
Hayes, B.C., Bartle, S.A., & Major, D.A. (2002). Climate for opportunity: A conceptual model. Human Resource Management Review, 12, 445–468.Google Scholar
Meams, K., Flin, R., Gordon, R., & Fleming, M. (1998). Measuring safety climate on offshore installations. Work and Stress, 12, 238–254.Google Scholar
Mearns, K., Whitaker, S.M., & Flin, R. (2003). Safety climate, safety management practice and safety performance in offshore environments. Safety Science, 41, 641–680.Google Scholar
Neal, A., Griffin, M.A., & Hart, P.M. (2000). The impact of organizational climate on safety climate and individual behaviour. Safety Science, 34, 99–109.Google Scholar
Niskanen, T. (1994). Safety climate in the road administration. Safety Science, 17, 237–255.Google Scholar
Oliver, A., Cheyne, A., Tomas, J. M., & Cox, S. (2002). The effects of organizational and individual factors on occupational accidents. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 75, 473–488.Google Scholar
O'Toole, M. (2002). The relationship between employees' perceptions of safety and organizational culture. Journal of Safety Research, 33, 231–243.Google Scholar
Reichers, A.E., & Schneider, B. (1990). Climate and culture: An evolution of constructs. In Schneider, B. (Ed.), Organizational climate and culture (pp. 5–39). Oxford: Jossey-Bass Publishers.Google Scholar
Schneider, B., White, S.S., & Paul, M.C. (1998). Linking service climate and customer perceptions of service quality: Test of a causal model. Journal of Applied Psychology, 83, 150–163.Google Scholar
Varonen, U., & Mattila, M. (2000). The safety climate and its relationship to safety practices, safety of the work environment and occupational accidents in eight wood-processing companies. Accident Analysis and Prevention, 32, 761–769.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Vredenburgh, A.G. (2002). Organizational safety: Which management practices are most effective in reducing employee injury rates? Journal of Safety Research, 33, 259–276.Google Scholar
Watson, B., Fresta, J., Whan, H., McDonald, J., Dray, R., Beuermann, C., et al. (1996). Enhancing driver management in Queensland. Fortitude Valley: Queensland Transport.Google Scholar
Wills, A.R., Watson, B., & Biggs, H.C. (2004). The relative influence of fleet safety climate on work-related driver safety. Paper presented at the Australasian Road Safety Research, Education and Policing Conference, Perth, Australia, 14–16 11.Google Scholar
Zohar, D. (1980). Safety climate in industrial organizations: Theoretical and applied implications. Journal of Applied Psychology, 65, 96–102.Google Scholar