Construction Research Congress 2020
Construction Workers’ Safety Behavior: A Path through Safety Leadership
Publication: Construction Research Congress 2020: Safety, Workforce, and Education
ABSTRACT
Safety behavior among construction workers is essential to construction project safety. There is an urgent need for a deeper understanding of how it occurs, thus providing a theoretical basis for its management. This study devotes to clarifying how safety behavior among construction workers is predicted by safety leadership. A mediator model was established and data was collected from 189 construction workers in China. Results show a positive relationship between safety leadership and safety behavior among construction workers. This relationship is mediated by risk perception of each construction worker. This study contributes to the knowledge of safety behavior by explaining its occurrence through safety leadership, sheds light on the theory of leadership by capturing the role of safety leadership in construction project safety management, and offers construction managers guidelines about how to improve safety behavior among construction workers.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this chapter.
REFERENDCES
Aven, T., and Renn, O., (2009). “On risk defined as an event where the outcome is uncertain.” J. Risk Res., 12, 1–11.
Barling, J., Loughlin, C., and Kelloway, E.K. (2002). “Development and test of a model linking safety-specific transformational leadership and occupational safety.” J. Appl. Psychol., 87(3), 488–496.
Clarke, S., and Sharon. (2006). “The relationship between safety climate and safety performance: a meta-analytic review.” J. Occup. Health Psychol., 11(4), 315-327.
Clarke, S., and Sharon. (2013). “Safety leadership: a meta-analytic review of transformational and transactional leadership styles as antecedents of safety behaviours.” J. Occup. Organ. Psych., 86(1), 22-49.
Conchie, S. M., Moon, S., & Duncan, M. (2013). “Supervisors’ engagement in safety leadership: factors that help and hinder.” Safety Sci., 51(1).
Didla, S., Mearns, K., and Flin, R. (2009). “Safety citizenship behaviour: a proactive approach to risk management.” J. Risk. Res., 12(3-4), 475-483.
Fornell, C., Larcker, D.F. (1981). “Structural equation models with unobservable variableand measurement error: algebra and statistics.” J. Market. Res., 18(3), 382–388.
Griffin, M.A., Neal, A. (2000). “Perceptions of safety at work: a framework for linking safety climate to safety performance, knowledge, and motivation.” J. Occup. Health Psychol., 5(3), 347–358.
Guo, B.H.W., and Yiu, T.W. (2015). “Developing leading indicators to monitor the safety conditions of construction projects.” J. Manage. Eng., 32(1), 04015016.
Gyekye, S. A., and Salminen, S. (2005). “Are “good soldiers” safety conscious? an examination of the relationship between organizational citizenship behaviors and perception of workplace safety.” Social Behavior & Personality An International Journal, 33(8), 805-820.
Ji, M., You, X., Lan, J., Yang, S. (2011). “The impact of risk tolerance, risk perception and hazardous attitude on safety operation among airline pilots in China.” Safe. Sci., 49, 1412–1420.
Kouabenan, D.R., Ngueutsa, R., and Mbaye, S. (2015). “Safety climate, perceived risk, and involvement in safety management.” Saf. Sci., 77, 72–79.
Lu, S., and Yan, H. (2013). “A comparative study of the measurements of perceived risk among contractors in China.” Int. J. Proj. Manage., 31, 307–312.
Nnunally, J. C. (1978). Psychometric Theory. McGraw-Hill, NY
Nielsen, K., Cleal, B. (2011). “Under which conditions do middle managers exhibit transformational leadership behaviors? An experience sampling method study on the predictors of transformational leadership behaviors.” Leader Q., 22(2), 344-52.
Seo, H.C., Lee, Y.S., Kim, J.J., and Jee, N.Y. (2015). “Analyzing safety behaviors of temporary construction workers using structural equation modeling.” Saf. Sci., 77, 160–168.
Shezeen, Oah., Rudia, Na., and Kwangsu, Moon (2018). “The Influence of Safety Climate, Safety Leadership, Workload, and Accident Experiences on Risk Perception: A Study of Korean Manufacturing Workers.” Safety and Health at Work., 9, 427-433.
Skeepers, N. C., and Mbohwa, C. (2015). “A study on the leadership behaviour, safety leadership and safety performance in the construction industry in south Africa.” Procedia Manufacturing, 4, 10-16.
Wu, T.C. (2005). “The validity and reliability of safety leadership scale in universities of Taiwan.” Int. J. Technol. Eng. Educ., 2(1), 27-42.
Wu, C., Wang, F., Zou, P. X. W., and Fang, D. (2016). “How safety leadership works among owners, contractors and subcontractors in construction projects.” Int. J. Proj. Manage., 34(5), 789-805.
Xia, N., Wang, X., Griffin, M. A., Wu, C. and Liu, B. (2017). “Do we see how they perceive risk? An integrated analysis of risk perception and its effect on workplace safety behavior.” Accident Anal. Prev., 106, 234-242.
Zhang, S.J., Chen, Y.Q., and Sun, H. (2015). “Emotional intelligence, conflict management styles, and innovation performance: an empirical study of Chinese employees.” Int. J.Confl. Manage., 26(4), 450-478.
Zohar, D. (2002). “The effects of leadership dimensions, safety climate, and assigned priorities on minor injuries in work groups.” J. Org. Behav., 23, 75–92.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Construction Research Congress 2020: Safety, Workforce, and Education
Pages: 31 - 39
Editors: Mounir El Asmar, Ph.D., Arizona State University, David Grau, Ph.D., Arizona State University, and Pingbo Tang, Ph.D., Arizona State University
ISBN (Online): 978-0-7844-8287-2
Copyright
© 2020 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Published online: Nov 9, 2020
Published in print: Nov 9, 2020
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Citations
Download citation
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.