IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/conmgt/v27y2009i4p419-432.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Group-level safety climate in the Australian construction industry: within-group homogeneity and between-group differences in road construction and maintenance

Author

Listed:
  • Helen Clare Lingard
  • Tracy Cooke
  • Nick Blismas

Abstract

In modern organizations it is overly simplistic to assume that a uniform, organization-wide climate for safety develops. Workgroup-level safety climates are more likely to arise in decentralized organizations and their influence on occupational health and safety (OHS) behaviour is likely to be stronger when work is non-routine, as in construction. The existence of workgroup-level safety climates was examined in the Australian construction industry. A group-level safety climate survey was conducted in a road maintenance and construction organization. The clear factorial structure produced in a larger sample of Australian defence logistics workers was not replicated and factors splintered, possibly due to the subject-to-item ratio in the construction study. However, the internal reliability consistency of the factors produced in the earlier pilot study was found to be acceptable for the construction industry data. Two requisite conditions for the existence of group-level safety climates, i.e. (1) within-group homogeneity; and (2) between-group variation, were satisfied within the road construction and maintenance organization. The results indicate that distinct workgroup safety climates exist in construction, providing a theoretical explanation for why some workgroups perform better in OHS than others, despite having similar risk exposure.

Suggested Citation

  • Helen Clare Lingard & Tracy Cooke & Nick Blismas, 2009. "Group-level safety climate in the Australian construction industry: within-group homogeneity and between-group differences in road construction and maintenance," Construction Management and Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 27(4), pages 419-432.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:conmgt:v:27:y:2009:i:4:p:419-432
    DOI: 10.1080/01446190902822971
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01446190902822971
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/01446190902822971?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Helen Lingard & Steve Rowlinson, 2006. "Letter to the Editor," Construction Management and Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 24(11), pages 1107-1109.
    2. Andrew Neal & Mark A. Griffin, 2002. "Safety Climate and Safety Behaviour," Australian Journal of Management, Australian School of Business, vol. 27(1_suppl), pages 67-75, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ran Gao & Albert P.C. Chan & Wahyudi P. Utama & Hafiz Zahoor, 2016. "Multilevel Safety Climate and Safety Performance in the Construction Industry: Development and Validation of a Top-Down Mechanism," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 13(11), pages 1-14, November.
    2. Chaohua Xiong & Kongzheng Liang & HanBin Luo & Ivan W. H. Fung, 2018. "Identification of Safety-Related Opinion Leaders among Construction Workers: Evidence from Scaffolders of Metro Construction in Wuhan, China," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 15(10), pages 1-17, October.
    3. Lars Peter Andersen & Line Nørdam & Thomas Joensson & Pete Kines & Kent J. Nielsen, 2018. "Social identity, safety climate and self-reported accidents among construction workers," Construction Management and Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 36(1), pages 22-31, January.
    4. Carol K.H. Hon & Yulin Liu, 2016. "Exploring Typical and Atypical Safety Climate Perceptions of Practitioners in the Repair, Maintenance, Minor Alteration and Addition (RMAA) Sector in Hong Kong," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 13(10), pages 1-12, September.
    5. Helen Clare Lingard & Tracy Cooke & Nick Blismas, 2010. "Safety climate in conditions of construction subcontracting: a multi-level analysis," Construction Management and Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 28(8), pages 813-825.
    6. Helen Clare Lingard & Tracy Cooke & Nick Blismas, 2010. "Properties of group safety climate in construction: the development and evaluation of a typology," Construction Management and Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 28(10), pages 1099-1112.
    7. Rita Peihua Zhang & Helen Lingard & Steve Nevin, 2015. "Development and validation of a multilevel safety climate measurement tool in the construction industry," Construction Management and Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 33(10), pages 818-839, October.
    8. Valerie Caven, 2012. "Organization Management in Construction," Construction Management and Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 30(6), pages 494-496, February.
    9. Zongjie Pi & Xin Gao & Linyan Chen & Jinghua Liu, 2019. "The New Path to Improve Construction Safety Performance in China: An Evolutionary Game Theoretic Approach," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 16(13), pages 1-24, July.
    10. Bumjin Han & Seunghyun Son & Sunkuk Kim, 2021. "Measuring Safety Climate in the Construction Industry: A Systematic Literature Review," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(19), pages 1-22, September.
    11. Graeme D. Larsen & Jennifer Whyte, 2013. "Safe construction through design: perspectives from the site team," Construction Management and Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 31(6), pages 675-690, June.
    12. Ibrahim Mosly & Anas A. Makki, 2020. "Safety Climate Perceptions in the Construction Industry of Saudi Arabia: The Current Situation," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(18), pages 1-16, September.
    13. Ibrahim Mosly & Anas A. Makki, 2021. "The Effects of Multi-Sociodemographic Characteristics of Construction Sites Personnel on Perceptions of Safety Climate-Influencing Factors: The Construction Industry in Saudi Arabia," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(4), pages 1-16, February.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Anders Pousette & Marianne Törner, 2016. "Effects of systematic work preparation meetings on safety climate and psychosocial conditions in the construction industry," Construction Management and Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 34(6), pages 355-365, June.
    2. Helen Clare Lingard & Tracy Cooke & Nick Blismas, 2010. "Safety climate in conditions of construction subcontracting: a multi-level analysis," Construction Management and Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 28(8), pages 813-825.
    3. Hafiz Zahoor & Albert P. C. Chan & Wahyudi P. Utama & Ran Gao & Irfan Zafar, 2017. "Modeling the Relationship between Safety Climate and Safety Performance in a Developing Construction Industry: A Cross-Cultural Validation Study," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 14(4), pages 1-19, March.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:conmgt:v:27:y:2009:i:4:p:419-432. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/RCME20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.