Organisational learning and continuous improvement of health and safety in certified manufacturers

Certified management systems have increasingly been applied by firms in recent decades and now cover the management of health and safety, principally through the OHSAS 18001 standard. In order to become certified, firms must not only observe the relevant legislation, but also improve performance and raise goals within health and safety on a continuous basis. The article examines how certified occupational and health management systems influence this process to evaluate how far they hinder or support learning. It presents a model with which it is possible to identify and analyse improvement processes. The model is applied to five cases from a qualitative study of Danish manufacturers with certified health and safety management systems. The cases illustrate the wide variation in health and safety management among certified firms.Certification is found to support lower levels of continuous improvement performance in handling health and safety issues. However, more advanced improvement practices are shown to be connected to the integration of health and safety in other managerial areas, as well as to the employment of similar advanced improvement processes within firms. The article argues that certified health and safety management does not obstruct learning, and can support advanced learning. Improvement practices with regard to health and safety are mainly dependent upon the firm’s overall organisational processes and do not automatically arise from the standard alone.     

British directors perspectives on the impact of health and safety on corporate performance

Occupational health and safety is established as a factor in international competitiveness, but we question the relevance of this economic argument at the organisational level. On this basis we assess the place of health and safety in the senior management agenda, based on findings from recent market research. Out of this we take a brief perspective on the literature on performance assessment and corporate reputation, and their relationship with health and safety in the workplace. We then report original in-depth research on directors' attitudes to and practice in workplace health and safety. We conclude with a summary of the key issues and a discussion of directions for further work.     

Management practices as antecedents of safety culture within the trucking industry: similarities and differences by hierarchical level

PROBLEM: A homogeneous perception of safety is important for the achievement of a strong safety culture; however, employees may differ in their safety perceptions, depending on their position and/or hierarchical level within the organization. Moreover, there is limited information on the antecedents of safety culture. This study examines how safety training, driver scheduling autonomy, opportunity for safety input, and management commitment to safety influence individuals' perceptions of safety culture. METHOD: Data for this study were drawn from 116 trucking firms, stratified by three safety performance levels. The data were collected from drivers (lowest hierarchical level), dispatchers (medium hierarchical level), and safety directors (highest hierarchical level), regarding their perceptions of their respective corporate safety cultures. Perceptions of safety culture were analyzed through a linear regression using dummy variables to differentiate among the three hierarchical groups. The resulting model allowed for examination of the specific antecedents of safety culture for the three employee groups and the extent to which the hierarchical groups were in agreement with each other. RESULTS: Driver fatigue training, driver opportunity for safety input, and top management commitment to safety were perceived to be integral determinants of safety culture in all three groups. IMPACT ON INDUSTRY: Trucking firms seeking to strengthen employees' perceptions of safety culture might begin by improving these safety management practices while appreciating that they may have a different impact depending on the employee's hierarchical position (e.g., drivers' perceptions of safety culture are more influenced by top management commitment and driver fatigue training). A fourth safety practice examined, driver scheduling autonomy, was not found to be instrumental in shaping safety culture for any of the three hierarchical levels. Consistent with previous research, implementation of stronger safety cultures should result in fewer accidents.     

The association between subcontractor safety management programs and worker perceived safety climate in commercial construction projects

Problem: Safety management programs (SMPs) are designed to mitigate risk of workplace injuries and create a safe working climate. The purpose of this project was to evaluate the relationship between contractors’ SMPs and workers’ perceived safety climate and safety behaviors among small and medium-sized construction subcontractors. Methods: Subcontractor SMP scores on 18 organizational and project-level safety items were coded from subcontractors’ written safety programs and interviews. Workers completed surveys to report perceptions of their contractor’s safety climate and the safety behaviors of coworkers, crews, and themselves. The associations between SMP scores and safety climate and behavior scales were examined using Spearman correlation and hierarchical linear regression models (HLM). Results: Among 78 subcontractors working on large commercial construction projects, we found striking differences in SMP scores between small, medium, and large subcontractors (p < 0.001), related to a number of specific safety management practices. We observed only weak relationships between SMP scales and safety climate scores reported by 746 workers of these subcontractors (β = 0.09, p = 0.04 by HLM). We saw no differences in worker reported safety climate and safety behaviors by contractor size. Discussion: SMP only weakly predicted safety climate scales of subcontractors, yet there were large differences in the quality and content of SMPs by size of employers. Summary: Future work should determine the best way to measure safety performance of construction companies and determine the factors that can lead to improved safety performance of construction firms. Practical applications: Our simple assessment of common elements of safety management programs used document review and interviews with knowledgeable representatives. These methods identified specific safety management practices that differed between large and small employers. In order to improve construction safety, it is important to understand how best to measure safety performance in construction companies to gain knowledge for creating safer work environments.     

Antecedents of fatigue, close calls, and crashes among commercial motor-vehicle drivers

PROBLEM: Minimizing driver fatigue among commercial motor-vehicle (CMV) drivers is a major safety issue in the United States. This study examines the effects of potentially fatigue-inducing factors inherent in truck driving work and company safety management in explaining: (a) drivers driving while fatigued, (b) the frequency of close calls due to fatigue, and (c) actual crashes among CMV drivers. METHOD: Data for this study are derived from a survey of CMV drivers in 116 trucking firms, with all data being driver-reported. The relative roles of fatigue-inducing factors and safety management practices in explaining variation in fatigue, close calls, and crashes are reported, along with the roles of fatigue in affecting close calls and crashes via hierarchical regression. RESULTS: Findings indicated that fatigue-inducing factors inherent in driving work and safety practices accounted for appreciable variation in driving fatigued (R(2) =.42) and close calls (R(2) =.35), but not crash involvement. Driving while fatigued also accounted for incremental increases in the amount of variation in close calls, after consideration of inherent factors and safety practices. IMPACT ON INDUSTRY: Findings indicate that safety practices (e.g., establishment of a strong safety culture, dispatcher scheduling practices, company assistance with fatiguing behaviors such as loading and unloading) have considerable potential to offset fatigue-inducing factors associated with truck driving work.     

Stock market responses to chemical accidents in Japan: An event study

Despite recent major chemical process accidents in Japan, the top management teams of firms still avoid taking costly risk reduction measures because of their low perceived impact on firm performance. The disclosure of information on accident risks might motivate managers to enhance workplace safety because of the subsequent evaluation of firms by investors in stock markets. If the disclosed risk information is newly available for investors, firms with a high risk of accidents would receive a poor evaluation by stock markets and thus managers would take risk reduction measures to prevent stock prices from declining. In this study, we conduct an event study analysis to examine whether accident risk information is already reflected in stock prices, using data on the Japanese chemical industry. The results of our event study show that the estimated cumulative average abnormal returns of firms' stocks are significantly negative after severe accidents actually occurred. This finding implies that risk information is not already reflected in the stock prices of Japanese chemical firms and that the disclosure of accident risk information has the potential to motivate the top management teams of firms to reduce their firms’ accident risk.     

OHSAS 18001 certification and work accidents: Shedding light on the connection

Introduction: The implications of OHSAS 18001 for substantive Occupational Health and Safety outcomes such, as a reduction in work accidents, have been under-researched in the scholarly literature. The impact of this standard on other aspects of performance, such as profitability and productivity, has attracted more attention. Method: This article aims to fill this gap by shedding light on the relationship between OHSAS 18001 certification and the rates of minor, serious, and fatal accidents per employee at work experienced in certified and non-certified companies. Results: Based on an analysis of a sample of 5,147 Spanish firms, the findings show that OHSAS 18001 certification is only loosely related with better occupational health and safety performance measured in terms of rate of accidents at work. A propensity for OHSAS 18001 certification to be found in economic sectors of activity with worse occupational health and safety outcomes in terms of rate of work-related accidents is identified. There is evidence of a negative selection-effect of the main international management standard for occupational health and safety. Potential distortions and biases that may be related to these and other findings in the scholarly literature are analyzed. Managerial implications of the main findings, implications for policy makers, and avenues for future research are discussed.     

Triangular typology approach to studying performance management systems in high-tech firms

To reflect the needs of high-tech firms and high-tech employees a set of interrelated models (triangular typology) of performance management systems is developed. The triangular typology articulates and aligns the elements in the performance management process and it expands on traditional binary models by adding a third (high-tech) dimension for each element. It is hypothesized that high-tech employees prefer the ‘high-tech’ dimensions over the other two dimensions of each triangle. A mail questionnaire is used to collect data on the actual and desired performance management practices. All but one of the hypotheses are supported. The ‘actual’ practices are mostly in the traditional corner of the triangle. The disparity between the level of actual practices and the level of desired practices indicates that high-tech employees are not well served by current performance management systems.     

Rail ruminations for process safety improvement

Process safety practices have undergone multiple refinements over the past few decades, but major accidents continue to occur. Most organizations strive to improve performance by strengthening existing methods or by adopting new and/or different approaches. Central to these continual improvement efforts is the practice of applying lessons learned as a means to drive out potential risk exposures. Often, lessons learned may be transferred from other industries; indeed, high-performing organizations regularly benchmark practices outside of their immediate industry.In pursuit of continual process safety improvement, this paper examines risk management practices in the Rail Industry, and explores how methods intended for managing passenger and public rail safety may be transferred to drive continual improvement of process safety. Rail safety has its roots in engineered safety solutions; modern practices have additionally embraced the human aspects of safety performance. A selection of approaches for rail safety assessment and risk management are described in three areas considered fundamental to safety management: management of systems, management of technology, and management of human elements. In light of these examples, the authors provide views regarding how the field of process safety management may leverage the rail experience.     

An adaptive management system for hazardous technology organizations

This paper introduces a management system suitable for hazardous technology organizations which has been developed based on the assumptions that in these organizations safety is a critical strategic factor, the existence of an enhanced safety culture is a crucial condition for safety and that safety culture enhancement implies in organizational changes. The management system was theoretically developed and then implemented at a Brazilian nuclear research and development installation, as a case study, in order to validate the theoretical propositions assumed in the system development. The developed management system comprises a day-to-day based organizational framework which treats safety as one of the organization strategic perspectives and provides a continuous adaptation of the complex causal inter-relationships which occur between the implementation of new management practices – designed and implemented according to the requirements of the criteria of excellence of the Brazilian quality award management assessment model – and the organization safety culture. The results achieved in the case study permitted to demonstrate the validness of all the system theoretical propositions and to conclude that the continuous and systematic operation of the management system makes an effective safety culture enhancement possible and simultaneously facilitates that the new management practices be effectively implemented, thus making continuous organizational improvement possible.     

基于系统动力学的空管安全绩效预测

为了提高绩效管理的科学性,实现对安全绩效的预测分析,针对空管运行系统的动态性、复杂性和延迟特性,引入系统动力学方法。首先,从管理和结果的角度分析指标间的因果关系,然后在因果图的基础上:1)采用网络层次分析法计算指标权重;2)建立绩效评价的系统动力学模型,由指标权重和评分规则确定指标间的关系方程,进行仿真预测,得到基于指标关系网络的绩效趋势。从查找绩效下降原因和绩效改进措施两方面分析绩效预测的应用,结果表明,运用系统动力学方法分析绩效,不仅可以逆向找到影响绩效的关键指标,还能提前预测决策变化对绩效的影响,保证决策的有效性,提高系统的安全产出。     

Actual safety performance of the Malaysian offshore oil platforms: Correlations between the leading and lagging indicators

IntroductionThis study establishes the correlations between performance of a set of key safety factors and the actual lagging performance of oil platforms in Malaysia, hence the relevance of the key safety factors in evaluating and predicting the safety performance of oil and gas platforms. The key factors are crucial components of a safety performance evaluation framework and each key safety factor corresponds to a list of underlying safety indicators.MethodIn this study, participating industrial practitioners rated the compliance status of each indicator using a numbering system adapted from the traffic light system, based on the actual performance of 10 oil platforms in Malaysia. Safety scores of the platforms were calculated based on the ratings and compared with the actual lagging performance of the platforms. Safety scores of two platforms were compared with the facility status reports' findings of the respective platforms.ResultsThe platforms studied generally had good performance. Total recordable incident rates of the platforms were found to show significant negative correlations with management and work engagement on safety, compliance score for number of incident and near misses, personal safety, and management of change. Lost time injury rates, however, correlated negatively with hazard identification and risk assessment. The safety scores generally agreed with findings of the facility status reports with substandard process containment found as a contributor of hydrocarbon leaks.ConclusionsThis study proves the criterion validity of the safety performance evaluation framework and demonstrates its usability for benchmarking and continuous improvement of safety practices on the Malaysian offshore oil and gas platforms.Practical applicationsThis study reveals the applicability of the framework and the potential of extending safety reporting beyond the few conventional lagging safety performance indicators used. The study also highlights the synergy between correlating safety factors to streamline safety management on offshore platforms.     

The influence of organizational factors on safety in Taiwanese high-risk industries

Organizational theorists have recently begun to pay research attention to the workforces of emerging countries in Asia, especially the greater China regions. However, little research has focused on the influence of organizational factors on safety in these countries. This study hypothesized that organizational factors, characterized as safety leadership perspective (management commitment, blame culture) and safety climate perspective (harmonious relationships), would influence group-level safety management, which would in turn influence individual level safety awareness and practices. To test this hypothesis, a safety climate questionnaire was distributed to ten Taiwanese plants in high-risk industries. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to analyze the linkages among organizational level factors, work-group-level factors, and workers’ safety awareness and practices. We found that safety leadership style and organizational harmony in Taiwanese high-risk industries can exert significant influences on work-group processes, which in turn have greater effects on individual safety awareness and practices. These findings and implications can serve as a basis for safety improvement in areas of the greater China region.     

Exploring the perceived influence of safety management practices on project performance in the construction industry

Although safety management is known to be vital to construction projects, very few studies have solicited views from construction practitioners about their perceptions of which safety management practices (SMPs) are important to construction projects and related to project performance. An empirical study was undertaken in Hong Kong in order to shed more light on this topic. In the study, the importance levels of 15 popular SMPs and five project performance criteria were rated by 232 respondents. An exploratory factor analysis was conducted, and three SMP categories - information, process, and committees - were extracted. Of these three categories, safety management process was perceived by the construction practitioners as being the most important, followed by safety management information and committees. Moreover, the effect of the three SMP categories on a composite project performance variable was tested using hierarchical regression analysis. Results indicate that the “information” and “committees” categories were associated with project performance positively and significantly. One of the major conclusions of the study is that the construction industry has paid relatively less attention to safety management committees, which were empirically analyzed as having a strong perceived impact on project performance. In order to improve project performance, construction companies should promote the criticality of safety management committees.     

安全氛围三“心”模型的构建与检验

把安全氛围定义为一种知觉特性;在勒温的场理论基础上,通过对影响员工安全绩效的环境因素中的行为进行分析,构建安全氛围的通用模型,其包括3个因素:安全管理承诺、员工安全卷入和组织安全沟通;通过问卷调查的方法收集某石油化工公司两个生产厂一线职工的353份有效数据,探索性因素分析和验证性因素分析以及相关分析的结果分别说明,"三因素"模型具有较好的结构效度和预测效度。通过对3个因素的进一步分析,结合实践,提出安全氛围的三"心"模型:领导关心、员工上心、上下一心。要获得安全水平的持续提高,需要3个方面的共同努力。     

Integrating safety,health and environmental management systems: A conceptual framework for achieving lean enterprise outcomes

IntroductionExpectations from external stakeholders for eco-safe products and production processes and internal stakeholders for transparent, stable, and robust environment, safety, and health operations have driven high technology organizations to adopt multipart management systems. Organizations can protect workers and the environment and simultaneously contribute to lean management principles by implementing integrated management systems. This research adds to the existing discourse and theory pertaining to the integration of environment, safety, and health management systems. Methods: The research was exploratory and inductive in nature and used mixed methods. Specifically, qualitative methods included use of an iterated Delphi method to elicit information from a panel of experts and detailed case studies conducted at four high technology performance manufacturing firms, while quantitative analysis of variance of correlated data investigated the within-firm and between-firm variability in motivating factors for adopting integrated systems and methods used for implementing integrated systems. Results: The results offer an integrated-lean management system framework and the strategies available and used by a sample of high technology performance organizations to simultaneously protect workers, the environment, and support lean enterprise outcomes. Practical applications: Organizations can protect workers, the environment, and simultaneously contribute to lean management principles by implementing integrated management systems requiring joint management that allow for the shared design, evaluation, and continuous improvement of environmental, safety, and health practices that are compatible with the lean enterprise movement in today’s high-performance driven organizations.     

以平衡记分卡为中心构建安全绩效管理系统

平衡记分卡作为一种绩效管理工具,已经得到了国外众多企业的认可,在实践中逐渐走向成熟和完善,并取得了较好的效果.目前,我国企业的安全管理已经进入一个新的阶段,正在建立"以人为本"的安全管理新理念.而安全绩效管理是"以人为本"安全管理的重要表现,是安全管理的重要一环.大部分企业的安全绩效管理还没有形成一个系统,极大地限制了安全绩效在企业安全管理中的作用.平衡记分卡应用的范围与我们的安全绩效管理恰恰有着多处的契合点.阐述了如何以平衡记分卡为中心来构建安全绩效管理系统,而且针对平衡记分卡在构建企业安全绩效管理系统时可能遇到的问题,提出了一些应对之策.     

企业系统化安全管理的主要问题及成因分析

针对系统化安全管理实践中存在着安全管理体系建立的模板化、安全管理体系运行的形式化、安全管理体系持续改进的无效化等问题,提出要提高安全管理绩效,首先纠正企业对系统化安全管理的认知偏差,统一企业不同管理层次的认识;其次是用正确的安全管理方法论作指导,开展系统化安全管理实践;三是匹配企业安全管理实践与系统化要求,发挥和协调不同管理主体的参与,对危险源进行动态化管理,有效实施绩效监测与改进。总之,企业系统化安全管理不能作为单纯的一项工作或任务来完成,必须以解决企业的具体安全生产问题为目标;系统化安全管理是一个持续优化的动态过程,既要把握安全管理系统化的要求,也要有效开展安全管理系统化实践。     

Incorporating organizational factors into probabilistic risk assessment of complex socio-technical systems: Principles and theoretical foundations

The current generation of Probabilistic Risk Analysis (PRA), particularly those for technical systems, does not include an explicit representation of the possible impacts of organization and management on the safety performance of equipment and personnel. There are a number of technical challenges in developing a predictive model of organizational safety performance. There is a need for a widely accepted and theoretically sound set of principles on which models of organizational influences could be developed and validated. As a result of a multidisciplinary effort, this paper explores the feasibility of developing such principles and proposes a set of principles for organizational safety risk analysis. Then, as a realization of the proposed modeling principles, a safety risk framework, named Socio-Technical Risk Analysis (SoTeRiA), is developed. SoTeRiA formally integrates the technical system risk models with the social (safety culture and safety climate) and structural (safety practices) aspects of safety prediction models, and provides a theoretical basis for the integration. A systematic view of safety culture and safety climate leaves an important gap in modeling complex system safety risk, and SoTeRiA, describing the relationship between these two concepts, bridges this gap. The framework explicitly recognizes the relationship among constructs at multiple levels of analysis, and extends the PRA framework to include the effects of organizational factors in a more comprehensive and defensible way.     

A study on the impact of management system certification on safety management

This study presents an empirical investigation of the influence of management system certification on the relationship between safety management and safety performance in major accident hazard chemical industry. The perceptions of employees about six important safety management practices and self-reported safety behaviour are measured with the help of a questionnaire survey administered in eight chemical companies in the state of Kerala in India. One thousand five hundred and sixty six workers participated in the survey with a response rate of 72%. The validity and reliability of the scales are found acceptable. Analysis of the data revealed that employees in companies with OHSAS 18001, ISO 9001 and no certification at all perceive different levels of the above safety variables in them and those in OHSAS 18001 organizations are significantly higher compared with the others. Step-wise regression analysis revealed that four out of six safety management practices predicted safety behaviour in OHSAS 18001 certified organization and three safety management practices were found to predict safety behaviour in the other two groups. But, safety rules and procedures (SR) emerged as a common predictor of safety behaviour in all the three models. This study emphasizes the need for OHSAS 18001 certification to reduce the accidents and thereby to reduce liability and improve productivity and safety and health of employees.