Theoretical Implications

There have been a number of safety climate models proposed (Christian et al., 2009; Flin, 2007; Griffin & Neal, 2000; Zohar & Luria, 2005), each with their own advantages and areas of focus. For example, while Griffin and Neal’s focus was on the individual variables that shape behaviour, Zohar’s model was focused on group and organisational variables that an organisation can target in their safety activities.

In this thesis, the analyses and the interpretation of findings were framed according to Zohar’s Multilevel Model of Safety Climate. According to Zohar’s theory,

employees form behaviour-outcome expectancies through their multilevel perceptions of the commitment to safety of supervisors and managers. Upon developing this theory, Zohar (2000; 2003; Zohar & Luria, 2005) operationalized safety climate in a manner different to other researchers and his original

conceptualisation of the construct (Zohar, 1980). Most researchers other than Zohar assessed safety climate as a single-level construct, with disparate dimensions such as management commitment to safety, supervisor commitment to safety, safety communication, safety systems, and competence all assessed as separate subscales on a single scale (e.g. Williamson et al., 1997; Hoffman & Stetzer, 1998;

Mearns, Flin, Gordon, & Fleming, 2001). This was the approach taken by Christian and colleagues and Griffin and Neal in their safety climate models, with Griffin and Neal focusing on manager commitment to safety in their scale. In comparison, Zohar operationalized safety climate as a multilevel construct, with dimensions assessing distinct behaviours loading onto separate supervisor or manager second order factors. Perceptions of supervisors were considered a group level construct, and therefore aggregated to the group level, while perceptions of management were considered a property of the organisation, and were therefore aggregated to the organisational level.

Despite these advantages of separating perceptions and aggregating to the appropriate level, very few researchers have followed Zohar’s lead in abandoning

General Discussion 183 the traditional method of safety climate scale construction. Johnson (2007) is the only author to have reused one of Zohar’s scales, while Newman, Griffin, and Mason (2008) authored the only other non-Zohar authored article to have separated perceptions of supervisor and managers and examined cross-level effects, albeit with a very different itemisation. Given the absence of studies replicating Zohar’s findings with a similar operationalization of the construct, the acceptable psychometric properties of the supervisor and manager scales in this thesis contribute to the literature by providing much needed support for Zohar’s Multilevel Model of Safety Climate. With a similar multi-level structure and similar behavioural domains assessed, the factorial validity, criterion validity, and

predictive validity demonstrated by the supervisor and manager scales suggests that Zohar’s model generalises to other industries. This is a significant finding, given that Zohar’s scales have only been tested in the manufacturing industry to date.

There are likely substantial differences in the working environment between the manufacturing industry in Israel, where Zohar has tested his theory, and the oil and gas industry in Australia. Therefore the similar pattern of results in both

environments suggests that Zohar’s model is relatively robust and can be applied to the oil and gas context.

While the results overall supported Zohar’s conceptualisation of safety climate, there are some specific areas where the results suggest some modifications or extensions could be made. Hence, in the following sections the implications of the results will be discussed in relation to the three levels of the organisation assessed.

10.3.1 Co-worker Safety Climate

It was originally hypothesised that co-workers would be a distinct source of

behaviour-outcome expectancies at the group level. It was believed that in a similar manner to supervisor safety climate arising from the discretion that supervisors possess in their interpretation and implementation of management policy and procedure, a co-worker safety climate would arise from similar discretion among workgroups in their adherence to supervisory directives. Despite co-workers safety climate being included in a dimension in only a handful of safety climate studies

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(e.g. Lu & Tsai, 2008; Seo et al., 2004), such a hypothesis was justified given the number of studies which have demonstrated the important role co-workers have in promoting safety (e.g. Goldberg et al., 1991; Simard & Marchand, 1997; Turner et al., 2010)

Based on these findings it was believed that a group level co-worker safety climate dimension would be a proximal indicator of safety outcomes. In some groups behavioural norms may consist of warning other members of potential dangers, adhering to all higher level directives, and earnestly treating safety as the top priority, and these groups were hypothesised to have lower injury rates compared to groups with low safety priority norms, despite co-workers not having any formal powers to punish or reward behaviour. The saliency of co-worker perceptions in comparison to supervisors and managers were believed to stem from their

immediacy, or as Turner and colleagues state “Since workers are relationally closer and more directly affected by the work practices of their coworkers, respondents may have been more likely to attend to cues from coworkers than from supervisors or senior managers about the importance of safety under demanding conditions”

(p. 489).

Contrary to expectations, this did not turn out to be the case, with co-worker safety climate demonstrating consistently weaker associations with safety outcomes compared to supervisor and manager safety climate. In both cross-sectional and lagged analyses, the co-worker scale and its subscales failed to demonstrate significant associations with safety outcomes, with some associations being in the positive direction. In comparison, even when the supervisor scale did not reach significance in its associations with self-reported injuries, regression coefficients were still very much in the negative direction. In short, the results suggested the absence of a relationship between group-level co-worker safety climate and safety outcomes. While there was some uncertainty over whether perceptions of co-workers existed at the group or facility level, the level of aggregation did not change the pattern of results, with facility level co-worker safety climate similarly not significantly associated with safety outcomes.

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The results did not suggest the absence of shared climate perceptions at the group or facility level. Intraclass correlation coefficients were of comparable size to the supervisor and manager scales, indicating that shared perceptions did exist at these levels. These shared perceptions, in the form of mean safety climate scores per group, were however not predictive of safety outcomes. Individuals within groups with a low average safety climate score were not more likely to experience self-reported near misses or injuries compared to groups with a high average safety climate score, a surprising result.

Given that the supervisor and manager scales all achieved significant associations with safety outcomes, reflecting past research (Zohar 2000; Zohar & Luria, 2005;

Johnson, 2007), the poor co-worker scale results suggested that co-workers were not as salient of an influence on behaviour as previously thought. It suggested that supervisors, with their ability to punish and reward behaviour, were a much more salient source of behaviour-outcome expectancies. Hence, the results could be interpreted as suggesting that the prospect of losing one’s job, or inversely praise or the possibility of promotion, were the key drivers of behaviour, rather than trying to follow any co-worker specific norms established by fellow employees. It was

thought that the formalised, highly supervised environment of the oil and gas industry may have been another contributing factor to the lesser saliency of co-worker perceptions. Turner and colleagues (2010), who found that co-co-worker support was the most salient indicator in the railroad maintenance context, similarly suggested that the less formal presence of supervisors in their study may have contributed to their results differing to Zohar’s.

However, when perceptions of co-workers were left unaggregated in order to gauge the effect of level-of-analysis, a more complex picture emerged. While co-workers demonstrated the weakest association with safety outcomes at the group level, when operationalized at the individual level it proved to be the strongest indicator of safety outcomes. Even after controlling for variance at the group and facility level the same pattern of relationships remained, with supervisor and management

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commitment to safety demonstrating non-significant associations when all three scales were added in the regression equations in the prediction of self-reported near misses. Hence, the results ended up mirroring that of Turner and colleagues.

These results suggested that level-of-analysis had a substantial role in affecting safety climate results, with relationships at the aggregate level not holding at the individual level and vice versa.

A more surprising result emerged when a mediation model was tested, with the relationship between group-level supervisor commitment to safety and individual-level safety outcomes mediated by individual-individual-level co-worker commitment to safety. In line with the individual level analyses, this mediation model was supported, with group level perceptions of supervisor commitment to safety becoming non-significant when individual level co-worker commitment to safety was included in the regression equation. This indicated that while supervisor commitment to safety directly predicted group level safety outcomes, in the prediction of individual level safety outcomes, individual perceptions of co-worker commitment were the most proximal predictor. These results therefore suggest that Turner and colleagues and Zohar’s results are not contradictory at all, but rather demonstrate that the level of analysis of the safety outcome does determine what level of the organisation is the most proximal. This is a key finding, and if replicated in future studies, may reduce ambiguity in the literature given it explains contradictory findings such as the one mentioned previously, and suggests that analyses with an individual level safety outcome are only comparable to other studies which have similarly assessed safety outcomes at the individual level, with the same applying to aggregated outcomes.

Zohar’s Multilevel Model of Safety Climate positioned supervisors as the most proximal influence on employee behaviour due to their ability to form behaviour-outcome expectancies among frontline employees through reward/punishment.

The results suggest an additional link between supervisor commitment to safety and individual safety outcomes. It appears that employees develop multilevel perceptions of commitment to safety from observing supervisors and managers as