Understanding safety culture and safety climate in construction: existing evidence and a path forward - literature review summary for safety culture/climate workshop

Details

• Personal Author:
  Goldenhar, Linda M. ; Hecker S
• Description:
  Safety culture and safety climate are constructs that evolved in the 1980s from the broader concepts of organizational culture and organizational climate. Organizational culture and climate have different meanings including when the focus is more specifically on safety. Unfortunately, neither the research literature nor the practical application of these concepts has offered clear or consistent distinctions, which has resulted in considerable definitional confusion. Conclusions and Recommendations: 1) Safety culture and safety climate are distinct though related concepts. Culture reflects deeper values and assumptions while climate refers to shared perceptions among a relatively homogeneous group. As the two constructs are often conflated it is important to recognize that most efforts at measurement, typically through workplace surveys, are assessing climate. Safety climate data can tell us something about the underlying culture, particularly where gaps in perceptions exist within an organization. 2) Major factors identified safety climate in the research literature include management commitment, employee involvement and/or empowerment, safety communication, safety competence, balance of safety and production, and supervisory and coworker safety support, among others. An important question is how these factors overlap with and relate to safety management systems including hazard identification, site audits, incident reporting, subcontractor management, etc. Schemes and models that integrate the more concrete safety management practices and the less tangible culture/climate constructs can enhance our understanding of these relationships (Parker et al. 2006, Choudhry et al. 2007, DeJoy, 2005). 3) Whether culture is seen as a thing or a process, every organization has a culture and a safety culture. Reason (1997) suggests where leverage lies for improving safety culture by delineating the components of a positive safety culture as: a) An informed culture, relying on good information; b) A reporting culture; c) A just culture that generates trust; d) A flexible culture, and; e) A learning culture. 4) The existence of multiple cultures or subcultures within organizations or projects is particularly germane to construction where trade acculturation and multi.employer projects are the norm. 5) Construction is a highly segmented industry. Efforts at improving the factors associated with safety climate and safety culture may require different paths for smaller contractors with fewer resources, but improvements can be made at all levels. Additional leverage may be gained by linking to other ongoing improvement efforts, including prevention through design, green building, and safety prequalification. [Description provided by NIOSH]
• Subjects:
  Construction Industry Education Health Personnel Occupational Health Safety Safety Management Workplace
• Keywords:
  Construction Construction-industry Construction-workers Health-science-personnel Information-processing Information-systems Professional-workers Safety-climate Safety-personnel Safety-practices Safety-programs Teaching Work-environment Work-operations Work-organization Work-practices Worker-health

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• Publisher:
  CPWR-The Center for Construction Research and Training
• Document Type:
  Text
• Funding:
  Cooperative Agreement
• Genre:
  Abstract or Summary
• Place as Subject:
  District of Columbia ; Maryland ; Oregon ; OSHA Region 10 ; OSHA Region 3
• CIO:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
• Topic:
  Workplace Safety & Health
• Location:
  North America
• Pages in Document:
  1-16
• NIOSHTIC Number:
  nn:20046895
• Citation:
  Silver Spring, MD: CPWR-The Center for Construction Research and Training, 2014 Jan; :1-16
• Federal Fiscal Year:
  2014
• NORA Priority Area:
  Construction
• Performing Organization:
  CPWR - The Center for Construction Research and Training, Silver Spring, Maryland
• Peer Reviewed:
  False
• Start Date:
  20090901
• Source Full Name:
  Understanding safety culture and safety climate in construction: existing evidence and a path forward, literature review summary for safety culture/climate workshop
• End Date:
  20240831
• Collection(s):
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:07003c0d959e2e181996788aae616adb2aa5e15ce91368c73aacf768482e6d0267820ab0c6a7306600808f760b103443ab53ac421574df863aa2844b4b579577
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/202166/cdc_202166_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 361.81 KB ]