Safety culture and safety climate are terms that are used often in the context of safety management but are not very well defined or differentiated. This research concentrates on safety climate, a summary concept of employee perceptions of safety management practices within their organisation. There is a common assumption that a positive safety climate results in better safety performance outcomes, yet there is little research evidence to support this notion. / Despite being defined as a summary concept, much of the research on safety climate has been empirically driven and has concentrated on identifying the number and content of the dimensions/factors that contribute to the safety climate. Due to a lack of theoretical input in the field, the use of proprietary instruments which are unavailable in the public domain and varied developmental histories of these tools, the findings of past research has been mixed. / This research addresses several of the limitations in the literature on safety climate by using the National Safety Council of Australia’s Safety Climate Survey. The research centres around two main issues; the dimensionality and factor structure of safety climate; and investigation of the applicability of a framework linking safety climate to safety performance. / The project was divided into two studies. Study I is based on archival data collected by the National Safety Council of Australia (NSCA) (N=215, N=127, N=90). Study II utilises data collected specifically for the purposes pf this research (N=226). The survey instrument was further developed for Study II to include scales that allow for a more complete investigation of a framework linking safety climate to safety performance. / A comprehensive validation of the NSCA safety climate survey was conducted. Structural Equation Modelling was utilised to examine various models of the factor structure of safety climate. It was found that safety climate is best understood as a second order concept comprised of several specific first order factors. The factor structure remained consistent across several samples however the strength of the individual factors varied in each sample. / Structural Equation Modelling was also used to investigate the framework of the relationship between safety climate and safety performance. Evidence in support of his model was obtained however some variations to the model were necessary to achieve this support. Reinforcement for the influence of general organisational climate in providing a context for safety climate was revealed. Given that it was not possible to include all aspects of the framework within the statistical model these findings provide a good impetus for further research in this field.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/245555 |
| Date | January 2002 |
| Creators | Ferraro, Lidia |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
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