The use of supervisory practices as leverage to improve safety behavior: a cross-level intervention model

Introduction: The paper presents three intervention studies designed to modify supervisory monitoring and rewarding of subordinates' safety performance. Method: Line supervisors received weekly feedback concerning the frequency of their safety-oriented interactions with subordinates, and used this to self-monitor progress toward designated improvement goals. Managers higher up in the organizational hierarchy received the same information, coupled with synchronous data concerning the frequency of workers' safety behaviors, and highlighting co-variation of supervisory action and workers' behavior. Results: In all the companies involved, supervisory safety-oriented interaction increased significantly, resulting in significant changes in workers' safety behavior and safety climate scores. Continued improvement during the post-intervention period suggests the inclusion of workers' safety behavior as in-role supervisory responsibility. Applied and theoretical implications are discussed.     

Comparison of air quality data obtained from roof top,sidewalk and suburban areas

A comparison of air quality data obtained at a downtown roof top location, a surburban area, a main road curbside and adjacent to a major highway was conducted. The results of this study revealed that a reasonably good correlation between daily average concentrations at these locations can be established. For primary pollutants it was found that within the immediate release zone their average concentration is 3.5 to 4.0 times higher than at a close location but at roof top level. Total suspended particulate (TSP) concentration was found to increase by about 80%, and O₃ is reduced by about 25%. No significant difference was obtained between daily averages obtained at the city center location and the suburb site 5 km away.     

Money wages,price of nontradable goods,and the environmental goods

The effect of environmental goods on money wages and the price of nontradable goods is analyzed. Environment is treated as a regular good, and as such, is added to the two other composite goods which are typically used as components of the utility function. In the budget constraint the relevant amount of environmental goods consists of that part which the individual might purchase in the market. Under these conditions it is demonstrated that an equilibrium situation will prevail if either the money wage or the price of the nontradable good, or both, are a function of the given amount of the environmental goods.     

The APCA Exhibition

On June 5 and 6 of 1980, two parallel plume oxidation studies were carried out in the vicinity of the Tennessee Valley Authority's Colbert Steam Plant. One study was performed in a smog chamber into which stack gases were injected and mixed with ambient air. The other study included direct airborne sampling of the power plant plume. Atmospheric oxidation rates for the conversion of SO₂ to SO₄ ^2- and the removal rates of NO _x (which is presumably the rate of NO₃ ^- formation) were estimated for both studies. The SO₂ to SO₄ ^2- rate coefficients were found to be 0.022 ± 0.009 h^-1 for both chamber experiments and the first airborne sampling day. For the second day, a rate constant of 0.041 ± 0.052 h^-1 was estimated from the aircraft data. The large deviation in this value is explained by the fact that the plume from the power plant combined and reacted with the urban plume from the city of Florence, AL. The formation of a very large "O3 bulge" on this day is also attributed to the mixed plumes. The first order rate coefficients for NO _x removal were estimated to be 0.27 ± 0.14 h^-1 for both chamber experiments and the first airborne sampling day. A NO _x removal rate could not be determined for the second airborne sampling day.     

Testing safety commitment in organizations through interpretations of safety artifacts

Problem

Safety culture relates to injuries and safety incidents in organizations, but is difficult to asses and measure. We describe a preliminary test of assessing an organization's safety culture by examining employee interpretations of organizational safety artifacts (safety signs).

Method

We collected data in three organizations using a new safety culture assessment tool that we label the Safety Artifact Interpretation (SAI) scale; we then crossed these data with safety climate and leadership evaluations.

Results

SAI were interpreted by employees in accordance with two conceptually distinct themes that are salient in the literature on organizational safety culture: safety compliance and commitment to safety. A significant correlation exists between SAI scores and the organizational safety climate. A similar (though insignificant) relationship was observed between SAI scores and leadership ratings.

Impact on industry

Employee perceptions and interpretations of safety artifacts can facilitate assessments of safety culture and can ultimately lead to understanding of and improvements in the level of organizational safety.     

Learning disability and leadership: Becoming an effective leader

This study investigates learning disability (LD) as an individual‐differences variable predicting leadership emergence, role occupancy, and effectiveness. We hypothesize that individuals with LD are less likely to occupy leadership roles, and that informal group processes (leadership emergence) will mediate the relationship between LD and leadership role occupancy. We also hypothesized that, among leaders promoted and selected for leadership training, there would be a negative relationship between LD and effective leadership. We first checked for LD in a sample of 1076 soldiers, measuring cognitive ability with a geometric‐analogies test as a control. Some months later, during the soldiers' basic training, we measured leadership emergence. We then identified those who were selected for leadership training, recording, and measuring their effectiveness according to supervisory and peer evaluations. Leadership emergence was found to mediate the negative relationship between LD and leadership role occupancy. There were no significant differences among leaders (n = 308) with and without LD in regard to leadership effectiveness. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Past experiences and future expectations generate context-dependent costs of foraging

Because environments can vary over space and time in non-predictable ways, foragers must rely on estimates of resource availability and distribution to make decisions. Optimal foraging theory assumes that foraging behavior has evolved to maximize fitness and provides a conceptual framework in which environmental quality is often assumed to be fixed. Another more mechanistic conceptual framework comes from the successive contrast effects (SCE) approach in which the conditions that an individual has experienced in the recent past alter its response to current conditions. By regarding foragers’ estimation of resource patches as subjective future value assessments, SCE may be integrated into an optimal foraging framework to generate novel predictions. We released Allenby’s gerbils (Gerbillus andersoni allenbyi) into an enclosure containing rich patches with equal amounts of food and manipulated the quality of the environment over time by reducing the amount of food in most (but not all) food patches and then increasing it again. We found that, as predicted by optimal foraging models, gerbils increased their foraging activity in the rich patch when the environment became poor. However, when the environment became rich again, the gerbils significantly altered their behavior compared to the first identical rich period. Specifically, in the second rich period, the gerbils spent more time foraging and harvested more food from the patches. Thus, seemingly identical environments can be treated as strikingly different by foragers as a function of their past experiences and future expectations.