A model of safety climate for the manufacturing sector

This research examines the structure of safety climate in the manufacturing sector. It does so by examining and comparing attitudes to, and perceptions of, safety issues in two manufacturing organisations and one organisation involved in the supply of construction materials. The concept of safety climate, and the associated concept of safety culture, have been the subject of much research and theory building in recent years and this thesis builds on previous work. The research framework used here employed a mainly quantitative methodology in order to investigate the architecture of safety climate using structural modelling. Statistical modelling has been applied in other safety studies, often involving safety climate as one variable in a global description of safety systems. However it has rarely been used to model and describe the structure of safety climate as an indicator of safety culture, as in this research. The structure of safety climate described in this research is characterised by the interaction of organisational, group interaction, work environment and individual variables, which provide indicators of influences on individual levels of safety activity. Structural models of the data from all three participating organisations fitted the broad pattern of organisational variables influencing group and work environment variables, which, in turn influence individual variables. A more detailed comparison of organisational structures, however, highlighted slight differences between the two manufacturing organisations and more pronounced differences between these and the construction material supply organisation, suggesting that most elements in the structure of attitudes to safety described here are industry specific. These results are explained in terms of working environments. Differences in structure, consistent with job roles, were also apparent between occupational levels. The research, in line with previous work in the field, has highlighted the importance of management commitment to, and actions for, safety, as well as the role of individual responsibility in the promotion of safety activity. The work reported here has emphasised their importance in developing and maintaining an organisational culture for safety

Learning to adapt health and safety initiatives from mega projects: an Olympic case study

Finding new ways to improve health and safety management in construction continues to generate much interest. Despite a reduction in deaths, injuries and ill health in recent years, UK construction still has high rates of fatal and major injuries compared to other industries. One of the key concerns is the difficulty of organisational learning in construction manifested as reactive responses to health and safety issues. The Olympic Delivery Authority launched a learning legacy programme in conjunction with industry, government and academia to capture important lessons learnt in a number of areas, including health and safety. Communication has long been considered an important factor in the implementation of health and safety initiatives. Previous research has typically focused on programmes run by single organisations. The London 2012 Olympic Park construction project offered a unique opportunity to investigate the impact of safety initiatives and communication across a range of organisations working side by side. It also offered an exciting opportunity to track health and safety messages as they are communicated to the workforce. The main aim of this research project was to evaluate the range of health and safety initiatives used at the Olympic Park in terms of messages communicated to workers, workers’ awareness, attitude and behaviour, and the transfer of knowledge within and outside the Park. A semistructured inventory was used to survey the workforce (managers, supervisors and workers) using interviews and focus groups on seven Park sites. A follow-up survey was conducted after three months, at which time interviews and focus groups were also held at non-Olympic comparison sites. Data were also collected through the observation of meetings and document review. The data were analysed using template analysis in line with the communication–human information processing (C–HIP) model. The transfer of knowledge into and out of the Olympic Park, and the impact of the communication processes on workers, were key issues identified from the analysis. The results were used to produce industry recommendations that are applicable beyond the realm of a mega project. Important recommendations include, but are not limited to, the important role of the client, the need for planning and the focus on workers’ comprehension and safety behaviour. The most important recommendation was that methods used at the Olympic Park should be used on more traditional projects

Achieving responsible design within the commercial remit

Drawing on findings from research conducted in the UK and Ireland, this paper discusses what is required for responsible design goals; such as sustainable design, inclusive design and socially responsible design; to be addressed more widely within industrial design consulting. It posits that achieving an impact ultimately centres on commercial success, and to effect a positive change on society’s greater needs, therefore, design consultants must create persuasive and appealing solutions which meet the demands of the commercial context, and which fall within the expectations of the client and market. The paper explores the individual designer’s motivation and sense of responsibility to address society’s needs; along with the set of challenges facing the management and pursuit of design practice towards those goals. From this, a series of areas with potential to improve the spread of responsible design are highlighted; including: empowering designers to argue cases more effectively; increasing the design consultant’s sense of responsibility and intention to act; and improving the demand, recognition, and value these goals receive. The paper concludes that the success of commercial responsible design requires more sophisticated understanding, metrics and examples, which have greater relevance to business goals and the full set of participant parties

Complexity and community - the relevance of the design community for responsible design implementation by consultant industrial designers

Today, a growing recognition of the profound topics affecting society calls for designers to address additional goals beyond those associated with profit making. But the real opportunity for industrial designers to affect positive change is determined by a myriad of elements, seldom regarded or accurately accounted for in the debates and rhetoric surrounding these topics.This paper will present findings from an explorative study carried out in the UK and Ireland as part of a doctoral research project. Derived from analysis of interviews and workshops with consultants, industrial design firms and academics, we will describe the complex system of factors affecting the possibility for designers to address sustainable and responsible design goals within commercial practice. From this, the industrial design community’s influence on the factors identified is discussed, concluding with an assessment of the community relevance for the implementation of responsible design by industrial design consultancies

Safety climate and increased risk: the role of deadlines in design work

Although much research indicates positive safety climate is associated with reduced safety risk, we argue this association is not universal and may even be reversed in some contexts. Specifically, we argue that positive safety climate can be associated with increased safety risk when there is pressure to prioritize production over safety and where workers have some detachment from the consequences of their actions, such as found in engineering design work. We used two indicators of safety risk: use of heuristics at the individual level and design complexity at the design team level. Using experience sampling data (N = 165, 42 design teams, k = 5752 observations), we found design engineers’ perceptions of team positive safety climate were associated with less use of heuristics when engineers were not working to deadlines, but more use of heuristics when engineers were working to deadlines. Independent ratings were obtained of 31 teams’ designs of offshore oil and gas platforms (N = 121). For teams that worked infrequently to deadlines, positive team safety climate was associated with less design complexity. For teams that worked frequently to deadlines, positive team safety climate was associated with more design complexity

The fog of work: the necessity for black and white, and grey rules to ensure safe workplace behaviour

The research outlined here is the result of a multi-disciplinary project which brought together engineers, ergonomists, ethnographers, sociologists and psychologists, entitled “Management of OSH in Networked Systems of Production or Service Delivery: Comparisons between Healthcare, Construction and Logistics”. The project aims to identify what types of OSH knowledge and evidence are in circulation and how they interact with each other in networked organisation. More specifically, investigating how workers interpret the multifaceted information they are exposed to and how this interpretation, in dynamic work contexts, influences their behaviour. The data obtained illuminate how top-down rules (explicit information) and socially constructed knowledge manifest and combine in different types of organisations

Safety climate: its nature and predictive power

The field of organisational climate and of specific aspects such as safety climate, has produced a number of theoretical and empirical scientific contributions, and their applied interest is self-evident. The concept of safety climate, which is the main focus of this paper, emerged in the wake of the seminal work by Zohar (1980). The safety climate construct has been used in the literature on safety at work, as either an antecedent of accident rates or as an aspect to be measured for the correct assessment of company safety, or even as consequence of organisational features and actions such as type of company, size and safety investment. However, theoretical development of the concept has not been paralleled by appropriate empirical assessment, especially in the Spanish context. The aim of this paper is to test empirically the main theoretical properties of safety climate through multilevel statistical models, well-suited to this type of research design. Its specific objectives are: a) to empirically test the safety climate property of shared perception; b) to test the predictive power of safety climate in relation to accident rates; and c) to study the relative importance of the different safety climate dimensions in the context of Spanish industry, while statistically controlling for physical aspects of occupational safety

The complexity, stability and diagnostic power of the safety climate concept

The complexity, stability and diagnostic power of the safety climate concep

The complexity of responsible design - key factors affecting the consultant industrial designer's opportunity to implement sustainable design and innovation

Since the beginning of the profession, industrial designers, fuelled by their adaptability (Sparke, 1983; Austin et al., 2007) have offered manufacturers a broad set of functions including styling, design for production, and human-centred design; to more recent involvement in innovation, strategy, and the creation of meaningful experiences (Lorenz, 1994; Stevens et al., 2008; Hargadon & Sutton, 2000; Olsson & Holm, 2009; Kotler & Rath, 1984; Cooper & Press, 1995; Zaccai, 1990). Throughout this evolution, however, the designer’s main role has been constant: to assist in growing profits for their clients by designing distinct products which are appealing and desirable to consumers, and which entice them to purchase (Sparke, 1983; Meikle, 2001; Whiteley, 1993; Kotler & Rath, 1984; Cooper & Press, 1995; Heskett, 1980; Borja de Mozota, 2003; Amit, 2006; Zaccai, 1990). Today, a growing recognition of the profound topics affecting society calls for designers to address additional goals beyond those associated with profit-making. Issues such as an ageing population, social inequalities and environmental crisis, coupled with an awareness of design’s potential to have a more positive influence, have raised a wide felt concern (not least of all by designers themselves) for the implications and responsibilities of industrial design’s current role (Sparke, 1987; Whiteley, 1993; Cooper, 2005; Fuad-Luke, 2009; Bhamra & Lofthouse, 2007; Walker, 2006). Design may well be “the most powerful tool yet given to man with which to shape his products, his environment, and, by extension, himself” (Papanek, 1984, p.102) but the real opportunity for designers to affect positive change is determined by a myriad of complex elements, seldom regarded or accurately accounted for in the debates and rhetoric surrounding these topics. There is a shortfall of knowledge on the actual influence the designer can have; what determines it; and what relationship designers themselves have with the system of factors within which they must operate. This paper presents the findings from an explorative study carried out in the UK and Ireland as part of a doctoral research project. Using thematic analysis of data from a series of interviews and group workshops with prominent industrial design firms, academics, and consultants in related disciplines, it identifies the system of factors affecting the possibility for industrial design consultants to address the goals of sustainable and responsible design within their role for commercial clients. Emergent themes relating to the consultant’s experience and motivations; project constraints; the remit of the designer in determining the product outcome; their relationship with the client; the product business case; and external influences, including those inherent to the commercial context, are described based on the realities of today’s practices. From this, the key factors of influence and their interrelationships are highlighted, concluding with a discussion of the resultant complexity which is shaping the opportunities for consultant designers to commercialise sustainable design solutions within their current role

The effects of organizational and individual factors on occupational accidents

This study examined the relationships between individual psychological, work environment and organizational variables and occupational accidents using structural equation modelling with latent variables. A series of nested explicative models of the relationships between these variables was derived. Data were collected from a wide range of industrial sectors in the Valencia region of Spain using structured interviews. In total, 525 valid questionnaires were completed and these formed the basis for the subsequent analyses. Analysis showed that the model in the series that proposed relationships between all the latent variables provided the best representation of the data. This supported the broad hypothesis that each of the variables has an effect on accidents and also showed that the individual level variables, including safe behaviour and general heath, mediate the indirect effects from the organizational variables. The final model showed that individual safe behaviour is strongly predicted within the model, although it is mainly related to organizational involvement in safety and not directly to perceptions of the physical work environment. An important role is played in the final model by participants' evaluations of organizational involvement in safety and this is consistent with earlier work highlighting the importance of management commitment to, and action on, safety issues. Finally, the model supported the proposal that stress processes mediate the effects of both organizational and environmental variables