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Knowledge transfer for occupational health and safety: cultivating health and safety culture in construction firms
Abstract
Within the last decades the incidence of workspace injuries and fatalities in the UK construction industry has declined markedly following the developments in occupational health and safety (OHS) management systems. However, safety statistics have reached a plateau and actions for further improvement of OHS management systems are called for. OHS is a form of organizational expertise that has both tacit and explicit dimensions and is situated in the ongoing practices. There is a need for institutionalization and for the transfer of knowledge across and along construction supply chains to reduce OHS risks and facilitate cultural change. The focus of this article is the factors that facilitate OHS knowledge transfer in and between organizations involved in construction projects. An interpretative methodology is used in this research to embrace tacit aspects of knowledge transfer and application. Thematic analysis is supported by a cognitive mapping technique that allows understanding of interrelationships among the concepts expressed by the respondents. This paper demonstrates inconsistency in OHS practices in construction organizations and highlights the importance of cultivating a positive safety culture to encourage transfer of lessons learnt from good practices, incidents, near misses and failures between projects, from projects to programmes and across supply chains. Governmental health and safety regulations, norms and guidelines do not include all possible safety issues specific to different working environments and tied to work contexts. The OHS system should encourage employees to report near misses, incidents and failures in a ‘no-blame’ context and to take appropriate actions. This research provides foundation for construction project practitioners to adopt more socially oriented approaches towards promoting learning-rich organizational contexts to overcome variation in the OHS and move beyond the current plateau reached in safety statistics.
... Experience feedback is an important process in safety management systems for prevention and improvement of safety activities, for safety performance [7] and for future safety planning [19,20]. Managing knowledge on safety is a key emergent issue for safety improvement, including continuous learning from past incidents [21], which require safety information as input. ...
... A study from the USA found sharing to be limited to written materials from regulatory agencies, and oral material through meetings organized by associations [30]. In the UK construction industry, a lack of systems to transfer experiences across projects to clients and their supply chains was found [21]. It is also reported that available collective safety information from authorities, agencies and other existing records is unstructured and fragmented, and the content is limited in its thoroughness [34,36,42]. ...
... Information sharing across actors is a premise to facilitate the higher levels of inter-organizational learning with regards to safety, and to contribute to proactive and predictive functions for safety. The complexity of the construction industry requires a more holistic course of action for safety management including interactions between systems, people in the organization, procedures and sub-cultures existing [21]. Collective safety information can be a means for this. ...
This paper is a study on sharing practices after incidents across organisations in the Norwegian construction industry as a means towards improvement of occupational safety. Interviews were performed with safety personnel from different actors, including clients, contractors, and designers. The findings show that several arenas for sharing of safety-related information across actors exist, however the sharing is limited, not structured, and occurs occasionally. Furthermore, the information is not widely shared across all actors in the industry for whom the information could be valuable, e.g., early phase actors. As a willingness to share and an excitement for new technology is present, the work goes on to propose how and where the industry can improve on information sharing after incidents to move towards interorganisational learning. A roadmap for the Norwegian construction industry is suggested for collective information sharing with a focus on technological and digital solutions.
... When discussing the literature, it is evident that workplace safety culture is enforced by an international organization called Occupational health and safety (OHS), and norms accepted in different countries (Australia 2015;Duryan et al. 2020;Lingard 2001). Various studies were carried out to study workplace safety culture in small and large construction industries (Biggs, Sheahan & Dingsdag 2005;Biggs et al. 2013;Lingard 2001;Whiteoak & Mohamed 2016). ...
... An influential study by (Duryan et al. 2020) claimed an inconsistency in Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) based on situational learning theory. He emphasized that workplace safety culture in the construction industry is attributed to a 'positive' learning culture, shared understanding, and mutual trust. ...
... He emphasized that workplace safety culture in the construction industry is attributed to a 'positive' learning culture, shared understanding, and mutual trust. The article summarizes the link between safety management and safety performance strategies that can work effectively in small scale industries using the right tools and techniques (Duryan et al. 2020). Another study based on a human-centered design system in Australia's construction industry was carried out by (Pazell et al. 2016). ...
This research covers a detailed analysis of workplace safety culture and the relationship between safety culture, safety leadership, safety performance, and safety management in Australia's construction industry. The research reviews literature from various journals and articles based on construction site safety, safety culture, performance, leadership, and management in small and large organizations. An integrated framework to evaluate the safety performance consisting of interconnection between safety culture and safety leadership, safety culture and safety performance, safety culture and safety management, and safety climate concepts. Although all the relationships are interconnected, not much research has been done, which necessitates this study. For this, the researcher conducted an open-ended interview of nine respondents from different construction backgrounds and a wide range of companies. The interview response was recorded and transcribed for data analysis. Thematic analysis to evaluate the response data from the recordings and findings indicated about workplace safety culture. The results suggest that individual leadership styles and traits influence workplace safety culture, which eventually enhances the industry's safety performance. Communication is the key that establishes the relationship between safety leadership, safety performance, and safety management. The study's limitation is the qualitative analysis performed for the research alone; however, future research necessitates workplace safety culture analysis by quantitative data such as questionnaires or surveys.
... When discussing the literature, it is evident that workplace safety culture is enforced by an international organization called Occupational health and safety (OHS), and norms accepted in different countries (Australia 2015;Duryan et al. 2020;Lingard 2001). Various studies were carried out to study workplace safety culture in small and large construction industries (Biggs, Sheahan & Dingsdag 2005;Biggs et al. 2013;Lingard 2001;Whiteoak & Mohamed 2016). ...
... An influential study by (Duryan et al. 2020) claimed an inconsistency in Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) based on situational learning theory. He emphasized that workplace safety culture in the construction industry is attributed to a 'positive' learning culture, shared understanding, and mutual trust. ...
... He emphasized that workplace safety culture in the construction industry is attributed to a 'positive' learning culture, shared understanding, and mutual trust. The article summarizes the link between safety management and safety performance strategies that can work effectively in small scale industries using the right tools and techniques (Duryan et al. 2020). Another study based on a human-centered design system in Australia's construction industry was carried out by (Pazell et al. 2016). ...
This research covers a detailed analysis of workplace safety culture and the relationship between safety culture, safety leadership, safety performance, and safety management in Australia's construction industry. The research reviews literature from various journals and articles based on construction site safety, safety culture, performance, leadership, and management in small and large organizations. An integrated framework to evaluate the safety performance consisting of interconnection between safety culture and safety leadership, safety culture and safety performance, safety culture and safety management, and safety climate concepts. Although all the relationships are interconnected, not much research has been done, which necessitates this study. For this, the researcher conducted an open-ended interview of nine respondents from different construction backgrounds and a wide range of companies. The interview response was recorded and transcribed for data analysis. Thematic analysis to evaluate the response data from the recordings and findings indicated about workplace safety culture. The results suggest that individual leadership styles and traits influence workplace safety culture, which eventually enhances the industry's safety performance. Communication is the key that establishes the relationship between safety leadership, safety performance, and safety management. The study's limitation is the qualitative analysis performed for the research alone; however, future research necessitates workplace safety culture analysis by quantitative data such as questionnaires or surveys.
... Hence it becomes essential to study the critical failure factors related to workplace safety culture in the construction field. Upon review it is evident that ways to improve positive safety culture is prescribed (Duryan et al., 2020) and found that responsibility and accountability needs to be held in safe workplace. In this chapter, I shall summarize this research to identify the gap my research will explore. ...
... On the other side of the coin, (Australia, 2015) and (Whiteoak & Mohamed, 2016) reveal that the workers and supervisor just 'tick boxes' in the checklist irresponsibly to look paperwork diligent . (Australia, 2015), (Duryan et al., 2020), (Newaz et al., 2019) and (Whiteoak & Mohamed, 2016) are commonly cited in the research studies. In view: (Biggs et al., 2005), (Xia et al., 2017) and (Laberge et al., 2014) are notable exceptions. ...
... An influential study carried out by (Lingard, 2001) in first aid treatment to workers found that first aid training had a positive influence over the worker's mindsets in the workplace safety, thus an important factor to contribute positive workplace culture. However, (Duryan et al., 2020) analysed cultural change phenomenon in the construction industry and claimed that there is no cultural uniformity in the worker behavior and attitudes despite Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) laws enforced. To counteract this, (Toole, 2002) mentioned that it was the contractor's responsibility to follow all the safety rules and adhere to it in any construction industry. ...
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... Moreover, managing knowledge is essential in order to create efficient occupational safety management systems (Sherehiy and Karwowski 2006). Also, several industries recognize that knowledge is a key intangible asset to improve safety performance (Duryan et al. 2020). Several studies investigate the application of knowledge management strategies in strengthening safety management across different sectors like manufacturing (Sherehiy and Karwowski 2006;J€ arvis et al. 2014), maritime (Teperi et al. 2019), and healthcare (Kolagar and Hosseini 2019). ...
... In constructor sector, these changes have major impact on performance evaluation of safety culture. This often leads to progress in project sites but still inevitably causes accidents and fatalities without learning from previous mistakes (Duryan et al. 2020). In this regard, an appropriate 'reinvent the wheel' mechanism should be in place to prevent future accidents. ...
... A study conducted by Kamardeen (2009) focused on collecting necessary information and knowledge to comply with workplace safety management system, rather than to have a knowledge management system for safety culture. Occupational health and safety (OH&S) is a type of organizational expertise that has both implicit and explicit aspects of ongoing safe practices (Duryan et al. 2020). Moreover, institutionalization and knowledge transfer across construction supply chains are necessary to reduce occupational safety risks and facilitate cultural change. ...
Many studies have indicated that positive safety culture in workplace environment could reduce occurrence of accidents. Yet, there is a lack of consensus on indicators pertaining to good practices, methods, and improvement strategies related to safety culture. Therefore, this study aims to identify the current state and development needs of the level of safety culture and suggests improvement by benchmarking through knowledge-based safety culture indicators. In this study, a qualitative research approach was adopted using open-ended interview questions to professionals from reputed construction organizations. The collected data was analyzed to summarize these interview responses highlighting the key indicators required to formulate a knowledge-based improvement framework for construction organizations. Results of the interview are analyzed and an improvement framework of overall safety culture is suggested. This framework proposes a different approach by focusing on the development needs of proactive safety culture pertaining to key knowledge-based indicators relevant for construction organizations. Further, this framework could be the basis to provide a holistic understanding of measuring safety culture to assess the level of safety culture in organizations.
... Zhang et al., 2018). Construction projects are complex technologically and culturally as they are shaped by the groups of professionals from other organisations across the long and complex supply chain (Duryan et al., 2020;Walker, 2015). Cultural silos are created even when "all contributors are in-house to the client organisation" (Walker, 2015, p. 161). ...
... Cultural silos are created even when "all contributors are in-house to the client organisation" (Walker, 2015, p. 161). This implies that safety on construction sites may depend on the management team working on that specific site, rather than on the company itself, and line managers' commitment to safety may have a strong influence on employees' safety behaviours (Duryan et al., 2020;Schein, 2004). However, top-down approach to managing OHS in construction is focused on regulating employees' behaviour through the enforcement of prescriptive rules and procedures without consideration of the role that different cultures in a single organisation play on safety behaviours. ...
... 'Blame' and 'macho' cultures are seen as another obstacle to safety behaviours (Duryan et al., 2020;Goh et al., 2018). Some work environments in the industry involve 'macho' role models, which inhibits raising concerns regarding fatigue, stress, and other health and safety issues (Goh et al., 2018), which is especially dangerous on the labour-intensive construction sites, given that fatigued and stressed workers are more (Sherratt et al., 2013;Smyth et al., 2019). ...
Within the last decades, safety statistics in the UK construction industry have reached a plateau and cultural changes are required for further improvement of Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) management systems. The aim of this research is to understand how the UK construction industry can improve safety reporting systems to learn from failures and near misses based on experience of aviation industry that made a successful shift from a 'blame' to a 'just' culture to create an atmosphere of shared understanding on what is acceptable safety behaviour. The reason is that an OHS culture remains undeveloped within the industry. The levels of engagement with reporting are quite low in the industry and the most frequently mentioned reasons fall into two related categories: blame and a lack of trust. Cultivation of a culture that can facilitate bottom-up reporting and learning from failures and near misses, followed by analysis of contributing factors along the causal chain, is difficult due to fragmented nature and the complexity of construction programme and project operations. The industry that is criticised for being inward looking and slow in learning could benefit from safety practices of other safety-critical industries, rather than take a position of its uniqueness. An interpretative methodology is applied in this research. Thematic analysis is supported by cognitive mapping technique. The findings revealed that there is a consensus among the respondents about the tendency to blame individuals for human error, which discourages bottom-up reporting on incidents and near misses. This paper demonstrates inconsistency in OHS practices in construction firms and highlights the importance of cultivating a 'just' culture for addressing latent safety problems, detecting systemic flaws and promoting learning-rich contexts to move beyond the current plateau.
... Under the knowledge domain, many safety researchers have to dig the role of knowledge in safety management from the various industries to increase safety performance and decrease adverse safety outcomes such as accidents and injuries. This facet of knowledge construct have explored in a variety of interest consist of safety knowledge (Agüeria, Terni, Baldovino, & Civit, 2018;Baser, Ture, Abubakirova, Sanlier, & Cil, 2017;Guerin, Toland, Okun, Rojas-Guyler, & Bernard, 2019;Guo, Yiu, & González, 2016;Jubayer et al., 2020;Laurent, Chmiel, & Hansez, 2020;Saedi, Majid, & Isa, 2020;Yang, Tao, Chen, Ge, & Reniers, 2020), knowledge transfer (Kwon and Kim, 2013;Chittaro et al., 2018;Haynes et al., 2018;Huang and Yang, 2019;Duryan et al., 2020), knowledge (Chang et al., 2020;Dong, 2015;Reber & Wallin, 1984;Subramanian, Arip, & Saraswathy Subramaniam, 2017), knowledge management (Boxenbaum & Rouleau, 2018;Haynes et al., 2018;Zhang, Boukamp, & Teizer, 2015), and knowledge sharing (Guerin et al., 2019;Lee, Lu, Chia, & Chang, 2019;Trianni, Cagno, & De Donatis, 2014;Zhang, Fang, Wei, & Chen, 2010). As a result, the knowledge construct has become widely used in a number of industries as the principal guide to safety performance in safety research. ...
... from the author's knowledge. On the other hand, a thematic mapping analysis on safety knowledge management found several issues exist, such as inconsistency in work safety culture and the lack of a systematic approach to knowledge lead to unsafe behavior outcomes (Duryan et al., 2020). Based on previous studies, researchers believe that improving employees' safety performance concerning safety knowledge will improve an organization's safety performance. ...
... The information contains three elements: belief, justification, and personalization, to be transformed into knowledge (Floyde, Lawson, Shalloe, Eastgate, & D'Cruz, 2013). Knowledge certainly has two characteristics, 1) cannot be fully documented, and 2) a degree of tacitness (Duryan et al., 2020). On the other hand, safety researchers have referred to the belief that enhances an entity's capabilities for effective action (Dong et al., 2018). ...
This article examines the issues and the conceptual basis in the operationalized definition of safety knowledge. The importance of safety knowledgeemphasizes the mediation role of safety knowledge in the indirect link between safety climate and safety performance assessment in small and medium enterprises and the functional nature of content validity by applying a step-by-stepcontent validity assessment. A content validation assessment process aims to increase representativeness, relevancy, clarity, comprehensiveness of the measurement's validitybesides to ensure the instrument answers the research question. In business, social science, and management science, many variables of interest and research outcomes are abstract concepts and
... It is important that the work progresses more slowly/controlled after a work accident. Newaz et al., 2019b;Yiu et al., 2019;Duryan et al., 2020;Chen et al., 2018;Brondino et al., 2012 Fulfilling the obligations of the workers It is important for workers to take the necessary precautions to prevent an accident after a work accident. Yiu et al., 2019;Duryan et al., 2020;Chen et al., 2018;He et al., 2020;Brondino et al., 2012 OHS behavior of workers It is important for workers to act more carefully after a work accident so that no more accidents will occur. ...
... Newaz et al., 2019b;Yiu et al., 2019;Duryan et al., 2020;Chen et al., 2018;Brondino et al., 2012 Fulfilling the obligations of the workers It is important for workers to take the necessary precautions to prevent an accident after a work accident. Yiu et al., 2019;Duryan et al., 2020;Chen et al., 2018;He et al., 2020;Brondino et al., 2012 OHS behavior of workers It is important for workers to act more carefully after a work accident so that no more accidents will occur. Kim et al., 2019;Mohammadi et al., 2018;Ghasemi et al., 2015;Ling et al., 2019 Incentive programs Paid leave or financial incentives are important after a work accident. ...
Because each construction project has a unique process, various problems may arise during the implementation. Work accidents come first among these problems. Work accidents in the construction industry can result in death, serious injury, or long-term incapacity. Other problems such as stopping the construction after a work accident, punishing the employer or the responsible persons, and loss of motivation in the employees after a work accident may occur. Therefore, it is extremely important to re-motivate the employees when they return to work after a work accident. For this study, survey statements were created. As a result of this study, the factors that are important when returning to work after an accident that may occur in the construction sector have been revealed.
... The specific characteristics of construction projects, particularly the physical, organisational and social decoupling of projects to parent organisations and the temporary multiple organisations, impose challenges in OHS management and monitoring (Harvey et al., 2019). It has been argued that the weak systems at the firm-project interface, across projects and organisational boundaries have caused difficulties in OHS knowledge management, communication, consistent performance and continuous improvement (Duryan et al., 2020). This is further exacerbated by the transactional business model adopted by construction firms where commercial considerations shape the project under and within which OHS is then addressed . ...
... Mutual trust between management and operatives is key to flexibility in decision making especially during crisis or unexpected changes (Xu et al., 2021). A culture of openness and fairness encourages raising concerns regarding OHS and wellbeing issues at workplace (Duryan et al., 2020). ...
... System dynamics (SD) was introduced by Professor J. W. Forrester of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1956. Because of the dynamic interactions between various system components, SD is used to analyze complex system behavior by combining qualitative and quantitative information to simulate patterns of behavior [24], which means that SD can be used to qualitatively study the coupling paths of various risk factors and the dynamic response process of the risks of the utility tunnel system. It is now widely used in the socioeconomic [25], ecological [26], project management [27], logistics and supply chain [28] fields. ...
... Environmental-R 2 natural disaster-r 21 48.62 temperature, humidity and chemical gas concentration abnormalities-r 22 33.78 third party construction impact-r 23 55.05 illegal entry of people/animals-r 24 26.21 staff working environment-r 25 32.16 Fig. 7. SFD. ...
Accidents in utility tunnels are usually caused by coupling multifactor risks, and ignoring the coupled risks can lead to biased estimates of the actual risk threats and losses. However, there are complex types of risks and coupling relationships within utility tunnels, which clarifies the coupling relationships between various types of risks and improves the accuracy of the assessment model to fit in reality. Therefore, this paper simulates the evolution process of utility tunnel risks based on the latent Dirichlet allocation algorithm, the NK model and the system dynamics to realize unbiased and accurate estimates. First, the risk factors are analyzed and classified using the latent Dirichlet allocation, and the coupling relationship is screened for employing the NK model. As a result, a system dynamics simulation model is established to determine the key risk coupling factors with the greatest impact on utility tunnels. Finally, a case study is given to illustrate the practicality and effectiveness of the model. The results show that the changes in utility tunnel risk coupling relationship can effectively characterize the changes in the dynamic risk of the utility tunnel. Moreover, the results can also be used to determine the coupling relationship that has the greatest influence on utility tunnels.
... Moreover, Cornelissen et al. (2017) suggested that the safety performance depends on organizational safety culture and workplace conditions at high-risk industries (construction included) and Duryan et al. (2020) emphasized the importance of a positive safety culture to encourage transfer of lessons learnt from good practices, incidents, near misses and failures between different construction projects/sites and their specific working conditions. Thus, we propose Hypothesis 5: safety culture affects safety performance through working conditions. ...
... This result reinforces the role of safety culture on safety performance prediction, coherently with the study of Duryan et al. (2020), which recognized that safety performance could be improved through a positive safety culture that guaranty the transfer of knowledge between construction projects (lessons learned from good practices, incidents, near misses and failures), reducing risks on the workplace. This result is predictable since safe and pleasant working conditions assign a more influential and tangible role to the working conditions' perception. ...
Occupational accidents in the construction sector are still a major concern with relevant costs at different levels, both individually and socially. We developed and tested two structural equation models to study, from the workers’ point of view, the mediator role of working conditions and safety leadership on the relationship between safety culture and safety performance, in a Portuguese firm. This quantitative and correlational case study applied a questionnaire to a convenience sample of 320 workers. A structural equation modeling analysis showed that safety culture was predominant in predicting safety performance and that working conditions mediated this relationship, but safety leadership did not. The results allow company’s managers gaining certain insights about the role of safety culture, working conditions and safety leadership on safety performance prediction and in the work accidents’ prevention. Furthermore, likely may help to understand what is going on in other firms, in construction sector in Portugal, and to identify problematic areas needing to be addressed.
... Hypothesis 1: Lean implementation positively affects psychological safety through respect for people, trust, communication, lean leadership, problem-solving, continuous improvement, no blame culture, value creation, and waste elimination. In the construction industry, most of the incidents are caused by organizational, cultural, and human-related factors (Duryan, et al., 2020). To eliminate these factors, learning behaviour can have a critical role in enhancing construction safety. ...
... To eliminate these factors, learning behaviour can have a critical role in enhancing construction safety. Duryan, et al., (2020) concluded that learning from previous events, managing and transferring the knowledge help to enhance health and safety performance in the construction companies. On the other hand, most of the psychological safety studies implied that a psychologically safe work environment facilitates learning (Edmondson, 1999(Edmondson, , 2018Kumako and Asumeng, 2013;Ortega, et al., 2014;Cauwelier, Ribière and Bennet, 2016). ...
The construction industry is hazardous, which requires careful consideration of
occupational health and safety measures. Among various strategies that are proposed to
enhance construction safety, Lean construction practices were widely implied and proved
to be effective. However, the link between Lean implementation and construction safety
has not been completely studied yet in previous research in terms of psychological safety
context. This study implies that psychological safety is of utmost importance in terms of
explaining the association between Lean and safety. Lean implementation elements such
as respect for people, trust, leadership, and continuous improvement positively affect
employees’ psychological safety. In this context, semi-structured interviews and a survey
were conducted with employees working in U.S. construction companies. The interviews
provided that the majority of the construction employees do not feel psychologically safe
at their workplaces either in traditional or Lean construction projects due to a number
of reasons such as heavy workload, and deadline pressures. However, it was found that
construction workers feel safer psychologically in Lean construction projects compared to
traditional projects. According to the interview results and literature review, a conceptual
model was proposed. Therefore, this study can contribute to the research area of
psychological safety in the construction industry.
... Although accidents and health risks in the construction industry are highest among other industries, injuries and fatalities have reached the peak in some developed countries such as United Kingdom (Duryan et al. 2020); China (Wang et al. 2018); etc. There have been numerous measures within the construction industry to ensure decline in the number of accidents in developed countries, including the use of building information modelling for improving working conditions on site (Cort es-P erez et al. 2020); institutionalization and transfer of knowledge across construction supply chain (Duryan et al. 2020); web-based spatial decision support system for proactive health and safety management (Atay et al. 2019); prevention through design practices (Che Ibrahim et al. 2020); and so on. ...
... Although accidents and health risks in the construction industry are highest among other industries, injuries and fatalities have reached the peak in some developed countries such as United Kingdom (Duryan et al. 2020); China (Wang et al. 2018); etc. There have been numerous measures within the construction industry to ensure decline in the number of accidents in developed countries, including the use of building information modelling for improving working conditions on site (Cort es-P erez et al. 2020); institutionalization and transfer of knowledge across construction supply chain (Duryan et al. 2020); web-based spatial decision support system for proactive health and safety management (Atay et al. 2019); prevention through design practices (Che Ibrahim et al. 2020); and so on. However, in many developing nations of the world, there have been a significant increase in the number of cases of accidents reported on construction sites with many unrecorded cases daily, including Nigeria (Waziri et al. 2015;Muhammed and Ashiru 2018); South Africa (Opaleye and Talukhaba 2014; Department of Employment and Labour 2017), etc. ...
There have been numerous laws enacted to regulate health and safety practices in the rapidly changing construction industry. However, the number of fatalities and accidents in the industry remains high. The purpose of this study is to explore the challenges to implementing health and safety regulations in a developing economy. A total of 30 challenges to implementing health and safety in construction were identified through an extant literature review; while data was obtained using survey questionnaires from professionals in both consulting and contracting firms involved in infrastructure development. The collected data was analysed with mean score, factor analysis and reliability tests to identify the main challenges to health and safety implementation on construction sites. The findings revealed that the challenges to implementing health and safety regulations include manhandling and external management, internal management, human error, enforcement system, working condition, and human and environmental factors. To ameliorate and reduce the effect of these challenges, there is need to review and update existing health and safety laws to align with current realities and periodically review safety records for future planning. This study could also form the basis for further studies in managing challenges to health and safety on construction sites.
... From the perspective of anthropology, traditional sports have absorbed the essence of the philosophical thoughts of "Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism". Advocating the intimate relationship between people and between people and nature [1][2][3][4][5]. It pays attention to people's moral cultivation and social cultivation. ...
Research on the application of information technology in physical education teaching in colleges and universities is studied in the paper. In physical education in colleges and universities, teachers and students should clearly understand that building an excellent sports culture under the needs of the modern era and society is the organic integration of physical training and moral education in a subtle way. With the advent of the Internet, it has provided a wealth of rich information, which enriches people's brains and enlivens students' minds, modern information technology provides information resources that are far beyond the reach of the teacher. Hence, this paper discusses the novel conbinations of the different models into the idea and propose the novel comprehensive information technology in physical education teaching in colleges.
... The company must have a health and safety management system to control risks associated with COVID-19 and prevent the contamination of workers. This system must be based on good hygiene and cleaning practices in the work environment, which guarantees the health and safety of employees (Duryan et al., 2020;Gultom et al., 2021). Therefore, the Algerian company must strengthen preventive measures, preserve jobs, and ensure sustainability. ...
Faced with health pandemic, companies producing goods and / or services must continue their activities to ensure their sustainability. They must organize accordingly by putting in place an organization and working means and hygiene in the company remains the most effective means of preventing risks. In this context, this article proposes implementation of a behavior hygiene and prevention model during the COVID-19 and post COVID-19 periods. Indeed, preserving human potential in the workplace is a fundamental performance lever to boost economy and company must take appropriate preventive measures. The adopted approach is based on the 5S method, which the main objective is continuous improvement of company's activities, thus offering an adequate solution to reduce risks in terms of health and safety. Besides the economic aspect, the proposed sustainable model is also part of pedagogical perspective for educating the population over time.
... Nurturing human capital needs knowledge management systems (KMS) and organizational learning. Focusing on safety-related learning, Duryan et al. (2020) found that knowledge management systems help identify the gap between H&S practices and procedures, capture and transfer the local knowledge across projects and organizations. This process could increase individual competence and organizational capability to prevent H&S incidents. ...
Safety leading indicators have been investigated as a proactive management approach to managing construction safety. However, there is a lack of insight into the implementation of safety leading indicators in construction projects and organizations. This causes difficulties in the adoption and consistent use of safety leading indicators in the construction industry. The aim of the research is to explore what and how safety leading indicators can be implemented to improve safety management in the construction industry. Built upon Xu et al. (2021), the study prioritized the relative importance of 17 safety leading indicators through a three-round Delphi survey and voting analytic hierarchy process (VAHP). It was found that organization commitment; client, designer and contractor engagement; training and orientation; safety climate and competence were most critical to safety performance in construction. Furthermore, operational, organizational and strategic barriers to the effective implementation of safety leading indicators were identified through the focus group discussion. The study suggested strategies for addressing these barriers and moving toward a proactive safety management approach. This study contributes to the theories and practices of construction safety management by linking the deployment of safety leading indicators with organizational and strategic issues at firm and project levels and addressing the root causes of poor performance. The effective deployment of safety leading indicators needs the engagement of clients, contractors, designers and supply chains to develop organizational capabilities to drive improvements from the project front-end to completion.
... In this framework, Duryan et al. (6) explain that in organizational management knowledge transfer (KT) is considered as a combination of framed experience, values, information from the context and from knowledgeable people that provides a framework for valuing and aggregating experiences and information. It is created and realized in the minds of knowledgeable people. ...
The interest of this article is the presentation of the findings of the relationship found between knowledge transfer and information and communication technologies, of the SMEs of the tourism sector of the Department of Caldas. The study is based on the application of a knowledge management valuation model to 61 operating companies of the tourism sector in the Department of Caldas. Based on a qualitative research, with a descriptive, exploratory and correlational approach. Regarding the use of ICT, it is a palpable fact, the progress of SMEs in the tourism sector of the Department of Caldas in the use of this resource as a basis for the sale of services, products and the transfer of knowledge inside and outside the companies. It is concluded that there is a positive and significant correlation between knowledge transfer and information and communication technologies. It is hoped that these results will lead to strategies that will allow the improvement of these companies
... A safety climate forms a culture that involves knowledge transfer at the organizational level [38] and engages social cognitions [39]. Implicit memory significantly affects unconscious cognition in making judgements [40,41]. ...
There have been limited studies analyzing the causes of construction workers’ unsafe behaviour from the social psychology perspective. Based on a Grounded Theory approach, this study first identified and defined seven coded categories related to workers’ dangerous behaviour on construction sites. The original qualitative data were obtained from individual site interviews conducted with 35 construction professionals. These main categories were found connected to workers’ status of safety awareness and sense of danger, which affected the type of unsafe behaviours, i.e., proactive, passive, or reactive behaviour. By further integrating social cognitive psychology theories into workers’ behavioural decision-making process, the formation mechanism framework and diagram were developed to describe construction workers’ unsafe behaviours based on the dynamic process of balancing the individual desires and perceived safety risks. This study advances the body of knowledge in construction safety behavioural management by performing in-depth theoretical analysis regarding workers’ internal desires, activated by external scenarios and intervened by a personal safety cognition system, which could result in different motivations and various behavioural outcomes. It is argued that safety cognition serves as a mediated moderation system affecting behavioural performance. Practical suggestions on developing a proper safety management system incorporating safety education in guiding construction workers’ site behaviours are presented.
... North Cyprus is a developing country with a rapidly expanding construction industry. OSH regulations are not enforced [10,11] leading to unregulated construction and the lack of sustainable OSH management systems. According to data from the North Cyprus Ministry of Labor and Social Security, there is a growing number of occupational accidents. ...
Occupational risk assessment is important for providing employees with a safe and healthy work environment. When compared with other industries, the construction industry poses a higher risk for accidents due to the variety and complexity of skills required for different types of work in the sector. Small-sized construction sites have a higher risk of occupational injury. Countries without occupational safety and health (OSH) enforcement pose an additional risk increasing the need of an effective and easy-to-apply risk assessment approach. This research aims to develop and study an easy to apply risk assessment model for small-scale construction sites. The method includes opinions from experts on safety, checklists to estimate the possibility of occurrence of accidents, the identification of current site-specific safety levels, the severity of risk, and safety barriers. The model uses both historical data and fuzzy approaches to calculate risk level and was applied to four different construction sites in North Cyprus. Results reveal the risk level for each accident type and the aggregate safety level of the construction sites. Falling from height was identified as the most common accident type with the highest risk level. This study contributes to the development of sustainable OSH management systems for construction companies by highlighting the measures that must be taken to reduce occupational accidents.
... Since the beginning of the oil and gas business, health, safety, and the environment (HSE) have been an integral aspect of operational risk management. As a result, a varied team of industry professionals undertook an additional study, including representatives from operating firms, well drilling and maintenance companies, and industry trade associations [82]. ...
Workplace hazards can have a significant influence on a worker’s physical and mental health, reducing an organization’s effectiveness in terms of safety. However, psychosocial hazards are being recognized as a crucial component that must be addressed for the individual’s and organization’s safety. The purpose of this research was to propose and statistically evaluate a brief theoretical framework based on leadership, organizational communication, work environment, and psychosocial hazards in Malaysia’s upstream oil and gas sector. The framework was tested on 380 Malaysian upstream oil and gas workers. The collected data were analyzed using partial least squares and structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM). The study’s findings revealed that in the Malaysian oil and gas industry, leadership, communication, and work environment negatively influenced the psychosocial hazards. This negative association between predictors and psychosocial hazards, particularly job expectations, control, role, and relationships, indicates new grounds for research. It is discussed how the findings could be used to track employees’ well-being over time and generate focused treatments.
... For example, by implementing structured feedback on sunscreen use at that specific workplace in order to motivate and improve compliance (47). This message should be produced in a colorful and illustrative format which helps to transmit it more effectively (45,48). Lack of awareness on the risks of UVR exposure, common misbelieves such as "people with a tanned skin are not at risk for skin cancer", and concerns regarding the interference of sunscreen with work activities were not identified as barriers among participants in this study. ...
Background
Outdoor workers (OW) receive a higher dose of ultraviolet radiation (UVR) compared to indoor workers (IW) which increases the risk of non-melanoma skin cancer (NMSC). Regular sunscreen use reduces the NMSC risk, however, adequate sun-safety behavior among OW is poor. The main objective was to conduct method- and intervention-related elements of a future intervention trial among OW, based on providing sunscreen and assessing sunscreen use on group- and individual level.
Methods
This pilot study was conducted at a construction site in the Netherlands from May-August 2021. Nine dispensers with sunscreen (SPF 50+) were installed at the worksite. OW ( n = 67) were invited to complete two (cross-sectional) questionnaires on sun-safety behavior, before and after providing sunscreen. Stratum corneum (SC) samples for the assessment of UV-biomarkers were collected from the forehead and behind the ear from 15 OW and 15 IW. The feasibility of the following elements was investigated: recruitment, (loss to) follow-up, outcome measures, data collection, and acceptability of the intervention.
Results
The first questionnaire was completed by 27 OW, the second by 17 OW. More than 75 percent of the OW were aware of the risks of sun exposure, and 63% ( n = 17) found sunscreen use during worktime important. The proportion of OW never applying sunscreen in the past month was 44.4% ( n = 12) before, and 35.3% ( n = 6) after providing sunscreen. A majority of OW (59.3%, n = 16) found sunscreen provision encouraging for sunscreen use, the dispensers easy to use (64.7%, n = 17) and placed in practical spots (58.8%, n = 18). Collecting SC-samples was fast and easy, and several UV-biomarkers showed higher levels for sun-exposed compared to less exposed body parts. There was no significant difference in UV-biomarker levels between OW and IW.
Conclusions
This pilot study revealed low sunscreen use among OW despite providing sunscreen, overall satisfaction with the sunscreen, and the sufficient awareness of the risks of UVR-exposure. Collecting SC-samples at the workplace is feasible and several UV-biomarkers showed to be promising in assessing UVR-exposure. The low participation rate and high loss to follow-up poses a challenge for future intervention studies.
... Meanwhile, the construction industry's H&S performance has improved in recent years (Esmaeili et al. 2012). Duryan et al. (2019) found that workplace injuries and fatalities have declined in the construction industry in the last decade following the developments in occupational H&S management systems. ...
The importance of knowledge transfer as a strategic asset for organisations has long been recognised by researchers and practitioners. Therefore, this study aims to identify factors that will enable the transfer of health and safety knowledge from construction companies to project host communities in Ghana. In total, 250 contractors comprising 155 building contractors and 95 road contractors took part in the survey. Stratified simple random sampling technique was adopted in selecting the companies in the survey, and principal component analysis was the analytical method employed. Six enablers of knowledge transfer from a construction company to the community were established. Namely, individuals' ability to use knowledge, collaboration, networking, communication, trust, and local content inclusion. It is expected that this study's findings would help contractors transfer valuable knowledge to communities in which they operate. It would also inform policymakers in dealing with external knowledge transfer from the construction industry. This study is the first attempt in a developing country like Ghana to provide the construction industry with the enablers of knowledge transfer from the construction industry to a different social system (project host communities).
... The proliferation of terminology to describe D&I activities has been explored extensively in the literature [37]. In the international OSH field, the terms knowledge translation, knowledge transfer, and knowledge transfer and exchange have been used [19,[37][38][39][40][41] to describe similar or synonomous processes. At NIOSH [20,42], and in the context of TWH [11], the term translation(al) research is used, and while overlapping with the term D&I, it has important differences, as described below. ...
Total Worker Health® (TWH), an initiative of the U.S. National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, is defined as policies, programs, and practices that integrate protection from work-related health and safety hazards by promoting efforts that advance worker well-being. Interventions that apply the TWH paradigm improve workplace health more rapidly than wellness programs alone. Evidence of the barriers and facilitators to the adoption, implementation, and long-term maintenance of TWH programs is limited. Dissemination and implementation (D&I) science, the study of methods and strategies for bridging the gap between public health research and practice, can help address these system-, setting-, and worker-level factors to increase the uptake, impact, and sustainment of TWH activities. The purpose of this paper is to draw upon a synthesis of existing D&I science literature to provide TWH researchers and practitioners with: (1) an overview of D&I science; (2) a plain language explanation of key concepts in D&I science; (3) a case study example of moving a TWH intervention down the research-to-practice pipeline; and (4) a discussion of future opportunities for conducting D&I science in complex and dynamic workplace settings to increase worker safety, health, and well-being.
... Úgy hisszük, hogy a tudásmenedzsment hozzájárul a versenyképesség és az innovációs képesség erősítéséhez, hiszen általa hatékonyabbak leszünk (jobb folyamatszervezés, ügyfélkiszolgálás és K+F), ez pedig pénzben mérhető (Argote, 2013;Lehner, 2006, Muskat & Deery, 2017. Duryan et al. (2020) tanulmányai is azt mutatták meg, hogy a hatékony tacit tudástranszfer nemcsak, hogy fontos a szervezetek számára, de hiánya pénzvesztéshez, vagy éppen balesetekhez is vezethet. A fentiekben láthattuk, hogy milyen sokat jelent a tapasztalati tanulás és az olyan, kézzel nem megfogható értékek, mint a közös jövőkép vagy a közös munka által létrejövő tanulás a vállalkozások megújulóképessége szempontjából. ...
We are living in an age of labour migration within and between organizations. Yet, it is not a problem for companies to find new employees. Through advanced technological innovations no company should relinquish its market-leading position. However, if the company does not give special attention to retaining the knowledge accumulated within the organisation – and, in particular, does not focus on the key people – its market position could be jeopardized. This is especially true when it comes to the leaving employee’s experience, implicit, or tacit knowledge, as this is the only sustainable competitive advantage that truly differentiates a company from other business players. This study presents a sub-research conducted as part of a large-scale research. The study focused on the methodological issues of transferable knowledge and the tools supporting knowledge transfer. The authors’ goal was to identify and classify the tools with which the sustainability of tacit knowledge transfer can be effectively integrated into the current Hungarian corporate life.
... Furthermore, such quantitative approaches often provide a static snapshot of management's decisions or organizational safety culture and are therefore limited in their ability to consider the underlying dynamics of interactions. On the other hand, in-depth qualitative studies on the topic, highlighting a range of contextual factors, are resource-intensive and are difficult to generalize across the system, therefore often resulting in fragmented knowledge and lack of practical implications (Duryan et al., 2020;Hopkins, 2019). Therefore, the need for the hour is to assimilate the qualitative and quantitative observations informing theoretical models on safety culture (i.e., near-miss reporting) to develop tools that could support practical decision-making (Vierendeels et al., 2018). ...
For organizations managing ultra-safe complex systems, near-miss reports provide a valuable opportunity to improve safety. Recent academic studies have emphasized the necessity of considering the interactions among several factors influencing the reporting behavior of employees. This study develops a model of near-miss reporting behavior that considers interactions among factors such as an employee's individual characteristics and decisions by organizational management. The current study adopts a System Dynamics (SD) methodology for model development and provides an example of how modelling can be used as an organizational policy tool. A cross-industry literature review is used to develop the causal structure of the model. To evaluate the model’s generalizability, the causal structure is then verified with expert interviews from two different systems, the High-Speed Railway and the construction industry. Factors common across the two near-miss reporting systems are the worker’s fatigue and a positive utility of reporting. The causal structure is then converted to a simulation SD model and is calibrated to simulate the trends in the number of near-miss reports with unique data on good-observations obtained from the construction industry. The simulations were able to capture the trade-off between the number of near-miss reports and working hours. Such management policy simulations are particularly relevant for ultra-safe complex systems, and help emphasize how systems will continue to face safety-related trade-offs despite overcoming the more commonly reported trade-offs associated with tangible production losses from incidents. The discussion emphasizes that management policies to influence worker fatigue must adequately consider its current system state.
... To increase the readability and understanding of the information on the posters, visual aids will be used when possible. Recent systematic reviews found that processing a message in a colorful and illustrative format transmits the message more effectively (45,46). Also, with the increase of foreign nationals in construction, the use of visual means for conveying health and safety messages is widely popular (45). ...
Introduction: Non-melanoma skin cancer (NMSC) incidence is increasing, and occupational solar exposure contributes greatly to the overall lifetime ultraviolet radiation (UVR) dose. This is reflected in an excess risk of NMSC showing up to three-fold increase in outdoor workers. Risk of NMSC can be reduced if appropriate measures to reduce UVR-exposure are taken. Regular use of sunscreens showed reduced risk of NMSC. However, sun-safety behavior in outdoor workers is poor. The objective of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of an intervention aiming at increasing sunscreen use by construction workers.Methods: This non-randomized controlled intervention study is comprised of two intervention and two control groups recruited at four different construction sites in the Netherlands. The study population comprises ~200 construction workers, aged 18 years or older, followed during 12 weeks. The intervention consists of providing dispensers with sunscreens (SPF 50+) at construction sites and regular feedback on the application achieved by continuous electronic monitoring. All groups will receive basic information on UV-exposure and skin protection. Stratum corneum (SC) samples will be collected for measurement of biomarkers to assess internal UV-dose. External UV-dose will be assessed by personal UV-sensors worn by the workers during work-shifts in both groups. To detect presence of actinic keratosis (AK) or NMSC, a skin check of body parts exposed to the sun will be performed at the end of the study. The effect of the intervention will be assessed from data on self-reported sunscreen use by means of questionnaires collected on baseline and after 12 weeks of intervention (primary outcome). Levels of SC biomarkers of internal UV-dose, external UV-dose, number of sunburn episodes, and prevalence of NMSC including AK will be assessed as secondary outcomes. The electronically monitored sunscreen consumption will be assessed as process outcome.Discussion: This study is intended to provide evidence of the effectiveness of a technology-driven intervention to increase sunscreen use in outdoor construction workers. Furthermore, it will increase insight in the UV-protective behavior, external and internal UV-exposure, and the prevalence of NMSC, including AK, in construction workers.Trial Registration: The Netherlands Trial Register (NTR): NL8462 Registered on March 19, 2020.
... First, as discussed in Section 3, the organisation is most appropriately categorised as a "mid-cap" company that is significantly smaller than more internationally recognisable global brands within the energy industry. Unlike the largest companies in the energy sector-like, for example, the oil & gas supermajors [18]-there are thousands of companies around the world that both fulfil the definition of a "mid-cap" and have OHS systems (e.g., [20,15]). The findings presented here are not so case-specific that it would be difficult to apply the essential learnings from this investigation to those other contexts. ...
The management of health and safety plays an important role in safety performance, and is therefore an important foundational element in an organisation's overall sustainable development. Many organisations are now able to collect vast amounts of data being in an attempt to shed light on the underlying causes behind accidents and safety-related incidents, and to spot patterns that can lead to solutions. Despite these well-intentioned Big Data collection efforts, however, accident statistics in asset-intensive industries remain stubbornly high as the data frequently fails to reveal actionable insights. In this paper, we answer Wang and Wu's (2020) [60], [60] and Wang et al.'s (2019) [61], [61] calls for the application of Big Data science to the safety domain by exploring the potential of applying tools and techniques from process mining, a research area concerned with analysing process execution data, to derive novel insights from and improve the visualisation of safety process data. We demonstrate how these tools can yield useful insights in the occupational health and safety domain by analysing process execution data from a Permit to Work system in an Australian energy company. Specifically, the analysis presented here highlights the underlying complexity of the organisation's Permit to Work process, reveals conformance and performance issues, and uncovers resources associated with conformance issues and changes in the frequency of such issues over time, thereby underlining the need to simplify the system. Encouraged by these fresh perspectives and insights delivered by process mining, we hope that this novel application will be a catalyst for further research at the interface between these research disciplines.
... Therefore, the workers had enough competency to perform properly. When the supervisor encouraged the workers, this made them work confidently (Duryan, Smyth, Roberts, Rowlinson, & Sherratt, 2020). For example, these items were checking ammonia tanks, warning other co-workers that they were unsafe while using ammonia, emergency response when facing ammonia leakage and using a fire extinguisher appropriately. ...
The important chemical which rubber cooperatives use to preserve rubber to reduce rubber coagulation is ammonia. The workers have a high risk of exposure leading to health effects. The high volume of storage will increase the opportunity of leakage and fire in the workplace. Therefore, good safety behavior will help them to protect against hazards that impact workers, customers, assets and communities. The study is a quasi-experimental research with a pre–test and post-test design in one group which is exploratory and experimental and performed among 55 workers in the rubber cooperatives in Southern Thailand. The study revealed that the safety behavior level of most workers was acceptable before educating and practicing safety at work procedures and using media for safety communication. However, there are some specific items on the safety behaviors which were poor and unacceptable such as not concentrating when using ammonia, not wearing personal protective equipment (PPE) and not testing or having medical checkup. After the pre-test assessment, there were interventions such as training, demonstration, supervision by supervisor and safety posters regarding the protection against ammonia release and fire in workplace and using PPE. These interventions improved workers’ behaviors. There were significant differences between pre-test and post-test on the safety behaviors (p-0.001) among the workers. Hence, the employers need to add or maintain any activities which help them to improve their safety behaviors continuously including providing tests or medical checkups for workers every year. These behaviors will assist in reducing the negative health effects of workers, ammonia release and fire in the workplace. © 2020 Wolters Kluwer Medknow Publications. All rights reserved.
... Clients can offer guiding principles from their own practices, for example in procurement. Encouraging service and product suppliers to continuously improve is more effective than imposing or devising prescriptive ways that disrupt consistent good practice and increase supplier costs (Duryan et al., 2020). This is the essence of the integration, collaboration and trust missing in the construction industry worldwide. ...
Implicitly or explicitly, every construction project organization has a business model that encapsulates how the project is creating and capturing value for the parent company or the client. The business models are translated into organizational routines and the design of workers' jobs which affect efficiency of project delivery and workers' wellbeing. Megaproject as a network organization involves collaborative work among a plethora of contractually connected subcontractor's project organizations, most of which have their own parent companies, working on their respective business models. These business models are normally inherited from firm traditions and set up top-down for employees to fit in and perform without much consideration of the specific nature of the project-based workforce. Inconsistencies between goals and means result in loss of productivity in the project process, which is not often recognized but fixed with Lean techniques through micro-level task analysis which produces more prescriptive rules to control workers' behaviors. This top-down engineering approach disrupts site practice, resulting in more problems. In the lack of strategic vision on project business models, project managers continue to turn to such techniques hoping to improve profitability in the middle of the busy site work. In this paper, we mobilize Elinor Ostrom's Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework to analyze the business model of a subcontractor's project organization in a megaproject through a scaffolding material delivery case. Based on the IAD framework we suggest an alternative scenario of institutional development process to construct a business model bottom-up from understanding the characteristics of the workers at work. The alternative project business model is expected to create a disruption to the management practice in projects in which project managers need to let go of the command-control mentality to professionalize the workers and enable local actors to lead their work.
This chapter argues a major barrier; perhaps, the major barrier to transformation is the organisation of the construction firm. Many of the barriers faced at the project level have their source and flow from the way that construction firms are organised. The historic process to project and construction management has been to employ institutional guidelines to provide routinised and standardised approaches to project management in teaching and research. There has been performance improvement in construction, much of which has arisen through product development and prefabrication. The interventions involve technical and management inputs to enable systems integration on projects. Non‐organising occurs in project teams within the actors and between the actors because of the transactional business model. Improving the organisation of the construction firm is a key element to supporting effective project organising and needs to be one key element of transforming construction through improving performance.
This chapter discusses how construction organisations can nurture the occupational health and well‐being (OHW) of their people and break through the safety performance plateau. It draws on the findings of two research projects investigating the culture and digitalisation of OHW and safety in the UK construction industry. The chapter explores how OHW can be embedded in construction practices from the perspective of structuration theory. It contributes to project organising studies by explicating how and why the current OHW practices fail and by providing a strategic approach that can help embed OHW in practices and, hence, improve organisational performance. Strategic investment in management capability is a key driver to incrementally transforming practices. Social capital entails networks of relationships that include norms, values, and obligations, which needs investment in relationships. The transactional business model needs change to incrementally invest in organisational capabilities to develop social and human capital.
The paper elaborates the characteristics of knowledge management in the context of occupational safety and presents the results of research based on the assumption that there is a link between knowledge management and occupational safety performance, and that knowledge management can help in improving occupational safety performance. The research involved 645 occupational safety experts from three Balkan countries (Slovenia, Croatia and Serbia). The results showed that the knowledge management in the organization is related to all of the observed aspects of occupational safety performance: number of work-related injuries within the organization; number of lost working days due to injuries; costs caused by work-related injuries and occupational diseases; financial investments in occupational safety; assessment of the state of occupational safety. The practical implications of the paper can be seen in the context of meeting the educational needs for continuous learning and improvement of knowledge/lifelong learning in the field of occupational safety.
Critical scholars have increasingly problematised the mainstream wellbeing management approach for being overly instrumental and normative. To address wellbeing issues requires reconstructing value in project business, which may involve challenging the dominant ethical theories and the transactional business model to include wellbeing as a legitimate objective of value creation in projects. In this essay, we advocate the ethics of care as an alternative ethical theory in project studies. The aim is to introduce its key tenets and discuss the implications for managing wellbeing in project businesses. From a care perspective, a relational belief system can be fostered through a dialogic process supported by relationship management, leadership and a transformational business model. In doing so, caring as an attitude and process is introduced and from a scholarly and practitioner standpoint, we begin to develop capabilities to support the individual wellbeing in project business.
El objetivo de la presente revisión fue determinar lineamientos a considerar en el proceso de gestión del cambio en el contexto de la gestión de la seguridad y salud en el trabajo. Se realizó una revisión de literatura en las bases de datos “Science Direct”, “SCOPUS” y “PROQUEST” para posteriormente hacer su caracterización y análisis de contenido de artículos que cumplieron con los criterios de inclusión. Se encontró escasa literatura al respecto, la mayoría de estos fueron revisiones sobre el tema y principalmente con un alcance descriptivo. En cuanto a factores internos, en la mayoría de los estudios se menciona la relevancia de indagar sobre la cultura organizacional, las condiciones de trabajo y salud y la debidanotificación mediante el programa de capacitación y entrenamiento. Sobre factores externos se identificó la importancia de revisar la legislación vigente y examinar ajustes ante la intención de aplicar sistemas de gestión. Se plantea la pertinencia de revisar aspectos ambientales y su impacto en las condiciones de trabajo y salud ante el cambio climático en el marco de la gestión del cambio.
New approaches are necessary to ensure the effectiveness of an Occupational Safety and Health Management System (OSHMS), which include the development of new methods that would facilitate the measurement of the proactive operational status. This study addresses the development of a tool that contains leading operational indicators in Occupational Safety and Health (OSH), with the main objective of prioritizing these indicators according to the consensual opinion of groups of experts. The Delphi method was applied to this manageable list to prioritize the indicators through three rounds, and a consensus was obtained on which indicators are most relevant, both for each individual group of experts and for all experts. This tool allows each company to customize the indicators that are most appropriate for its own reality by considering the report of these indicators. This tool can be a part of a safety dashboard model and considers only the most relevant indicators.
Over the last few decades, many developing countries witnessed remarkable growth that resulted in progress and prosperity across various sectors. However, such growth impacted the work-related safety accidents in terms of occurrence and/or severity. To mitigate health and safety risks, governments issued and enforced legislative regulations targeting general and specific industries. Nevertheless, the impact of these regulations in some industry sectors warrants further investigation. The aim of this study is to identify work-related accident hazards in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and examine causal factors to provide recommendations for improvement. Content analysis of accident reports and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) are the two main research tools used in this study. Content analysis is conducted based on a sample of 1700 historical accident reports occurred during 2019–2020 in UAE. The CFA is conducted based on a survey developed using the accident reports analysis and feedback from six experts with 290 respondents. The analysis revealed that falls, injuries due to contact with sharp edges, and burns are the most frequent accident types. The CFA analysis revealed that training enhancement and total safety operating system are viable solutions to aid in controlling the frequency and severity of these accidents.
Objective
A limited focus on dissemination and implementation (D&I) science has hindered the uptake of evidence-based interventions (EBIs) that reduce workplace morbidity and mortality. D&I science methods can be used in the occupational safety and health (OSH) field to advance the adoption, implementation, and sustainment of EBIs for complex workplaces. These approaches should be responsive to contextual factors, including the needs of partners and beneficiaries (such as employers, employees, and intermediaries).
Methods
By synthesizing seminal literature and texts and leveraging our collective knowledge as D&I science and/or OSH researchers, we developed a D&I science primer for OSH. First, we provide an overview of common D&I terminology and concepts. Second, we describe several key and evolving issues in D&I science: balancing adaptation with intervention fidelity and specifying implementation outcomes and strategies. Next, we review D&I theories, models, and frameworks and offer examples for applying these to OSH research. We also discuss widely used D&I research designs, methods, and measures. Finally, we discuss future directions for D&I science application to OSH and provide resources for further exploration.
Results
We compiled a D&I science primer for OSH appropriate for practitioners and evaluators, especially those newer to the field.
Conclusion
This article fills a gap in the OSH research by providing an overview of D&I science to enhance understanding of key concepts, issues, models, designs, methods and measures for the translation into practice of effective OSH interventions to advance the safety, health and well-being of workers.
Workplace health and safety is a significant global issue. Failure to consider contextualisation processes may result in a misalignment between safety interventions and the context of application with adverse consequences. We address this knowledge gap in three ways. A comprehensive rapid evidence assessment shows that interventions represent administrative controls and opportunities to learn from success and failure are missed. A screen of nationally and internationally recognised training materials and interviews with experienced trainers shows that courses rarely consider the influence of context on the intervention being trained. A set of 17 multi-sector cases identified contextual factors contributing to the successful and unsuccessful deployment of safety interventions. It is vital therefore that Occupational Safety and Health professionals and practitioners consider both the type of intervention and the wider context in which that intervention exists.
The purpose of this chapter is to provide the conceptual framework, design, and vital elements of implementation of an effective and efficient occupational health and safety (OHS) performance management system in an enterprise. The aim of the chapter is to emphasize the importance of a managerial, systematic, and integral approach to the management of OHS performance, which is a field often left in the shadow of other performance dimensions. This chapter develops the specific framework of OHS performance management, which is characterized by the four key OHS performance phases: planning, measurement, analysis, and reporting. The proposed conceptual framework and the highlighted key aspects of OHS performance management are intended to aid managers in various industries (with particularly prominent OHS risks and hazards) in the development and implementation of the OHS management system and the OHS performance management system. Their proper implementation is aimed at the accomplishment of OHS goals and the business goals of enterprises in the contemporary business environment.
Purpose
This study aimed to identify driving factors of safety attitudinal ambivalence (AA) and explore their influence. Construction workers' intention to act safely can be instable under conflicting information from safety management, co-workers and habitual unsafe behaviour. Existing research explained the mechanism of unsafe behaviours as individual decisions but failed to include AA, as the co-existence of both positive and negative attitude.
Design/methodology/approach
This study applied system dynamics to explore factors of construction workers' AA and simulate the process of mitigating the ambivalence for less safety behaviour. Specifically, the group model building approach with eight experts was used to map the causal loop diagram and field questionnaire of 209 construction workers were used to collect empirical data for initiating parameters.
Findings
The group model building identified five direct factors of AA, namely the organisational safety support, important others' safety attitude, emotional arousal, safety production experience and work pressure, with seven feedback paths. The questionnaire survey obtained the initial values of the factors in the SD model, with the average ambivalence at 0.389. The ambivalence between cognitive and affective safety attitude was the highest. Model simulation results indicated that safety experience and work pressure had the most significant effects, and safety experience and positive attitude of co-workers could compensate the pressure from tight schedule and budget.
Originality/value
This study provided a new perspective of the dynamic safety attitude under the co-existence of positive and negative attitude, identified its driving factors and their influencing paths. The group model building approach and field questionnaire surveys were used to provide convincible suggestions for empirical safety management with least and most effective approaches and possible interventions to prevent unsafe behaviour with tight schedule and budget.
The reduced lifespan of Information Systems (IS) based products continues to trouble IS companies. We investigate if there are evidence of short time ethnographies in IS or Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) studies, including the researcher as a part of the concurrent engineering team. Our literature analysis reveals that organizations are making use of different forms of ethnographies while addressing customer needs. We propose a Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) framework that can help researchers understand existing research focusing on the shortened product life and, at the same time, appreciate the bridge between research and practice.
Construction project organization is a stressful working environment that exposes project management practitioners (PMPs) to poor mental health, which is a significant social and economic problem in Australia. The New South Wales (NSW) government, Australia government launched training on how businesses can attain mentally healthy workplaces through indicators for mental healthiness evaluation of project organization, where construction projects are executed. While acknowledging the significance of NSW initiative in promoting mentally healthy construction project environments, indicator assessment tool to assist construction businesses in NSW in evaluating mental healthiness of construction project environments is lacking. The paucity of an assessment tool for mentally healthy construction project environment prevented detection of unprecedented risk inimical to the mental health of project management practitioners in NSW, Australia. In this regard, this paper aims to develop an indicator assessment tool in the form of a data spreadsheet, using mental health indicators. Mental health assessment tool would assist project managers and stakeholders to accurately and reliably evaluate the mental healthiness of their construction project organisations in NSW, Australia. More importantly, with the mental health assessment tool, project managers can compare the mental health status of different project organisations on the same basis. The paper adopted systematic literature review to identify indicators for mentally healthy environments from various sectors to build a user-friendly indicators assessment tool for evaluating mental health level of construction project organizations.
Knowledge management is crucial for construction safety management. Widely collected and well-organized safety-related documents are recognized to be significant in raising the workers' security awareness and then to prevent hazards and accidents. To improve document processing efficiency, automatic information extraction plays an important role. However, currently, automatic information extraction modeling requires large scale training datasets. It is a big challenge for the engineering industry, especially for the fields which heavily rely on the experts’ knowledge. Limited data sources, and high time and labor costs make it not practical to establish a large-scale dataset. This work proposed a natural language data augmentation-based small samples training framework for automatic information extraction modeling. With the designed cross combination-based text data augmentation algorithm, the deep neural network can be employed to build up automatic information extraction models without large-scale raw data and manual annotations. Characters semantic coding is employed to avoid word segmentation and make sure that the framework can be utilized in different writing language systems. The BiLSTM-CRF model is adopted as the detection core to conduct character classification. Through a case study of two independent accident news report datasets analysis, the proposed framework has been validated. A reliable and robust automatic information extraction model can be established, even though with small samples training.
The recent use of quantitative survey methods and "dimensions" in culture studies contradicts some of the epistemological foundations of culture research and calls into question a similarity to earlier research on organizational climate. These two perspectives are compare in terms of their definition of the phenomenon, methods and epistemology, and theoretical foundations.
Companies need to ensure a functioning occupational health and safety management (OHSM) system to protect human health and safety during work, but generally there are differences in how successful they are in this endeavor. Earlier research has indicated that factors like company size, safety culture, and different measures of financial performance may be related to the quality of OHSM practices in companies. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate whether these factors are associated with OHSM practices in companies. A postal questionnaire was used to collect data from a sample of Swedish manufacturing companies, and complementary data regarding the companies were retrieved from a credit bureau database. The statistical analysis was performed with ordinal regression analysis using generalized estimating equations. Different predictor variables were modeled with OHSM practices as the outcome variable, in order to calculate p-values and to estimate odds ratios. Company size, safety culture, and creditworthiness were found to be associated with better, as well as worse, OHSM practices in companies (depending on directionality). Practical implications for industry and future research are discussed.
In the knowledge management world there are many different terms flying around. Some are more important and frequently used than others. In this paper, we present and discuss the development and views of three terms: knowledge transfer, knowledge sharing and knowledge barriers. Knowledge transfer and knowledge sharing are sometimes used synonymously or have overlapping content. Several authors have pointed out this confusion while other authors have attempted to clarify the differences and define the terms. Knowledge barriers in themselves seem to have a more obvious content although the borders between knowledge barriers and connecting terms, such as 'barriers to knowledge sharing', seem to blur discussions and views. Our aim is to make a contribution to finding appropriate demarcations between these concepts. After reviewing Knowledge Management literature, we can state that the three terms, knowledge transfer, knowledge sharing and knowledge barriers, are somewhat blurred. For knowledge transfer and knowledge sharing, the blurriness is linked mainly to the fact that the analytical level each term is related to has come and gone and come back again. For knowledge barriers, the blurriness comes from the development of the term. The mere existence of the many different categorizations of knowledge barriers implies that the concept itself is blurry. The concept seems clear cut and focuses on knowledge although it is also broad and later sources have included much more than knowledge. This paper concludes by highlighting the effects on the terms when two different knowledge perspectives, knowledge as an object (or the K-O view) and knowledge as a subjective contextual construction (or the K-SCC view) are applied. The clarifications are supported by examples from companies in different industries (such as Cargotec and IKEA) and the public sector (police, fire brigade, ambulance and other emergency services).
Construction health and safety (H&S) is usually managed using a top-down approach of regulating workers’ behaviour through the implementation and enforcement of prescriptive rules and procedures. This management approach privileges technical knowledge over knowledge based on workers’ tacit and informal ways of knowing about H&S. The aim is to investigate the potential for participatory video to: (1) identify areas in which formal policies and procedures do not reflect H&S as practised by workers; (2) encourage creative thinking and elicit workers’ ideas for H&S improvements; and (3) provide an effective mechanism for capturing and sharing tacit H&S knowledge in construction organizations. Interviews were conducted in two case study organizations (CSOs) in the Australian construction industry. The results suggest reflexive participatory video enabled workers and managers to view their work practices from a different perspective. Workers identified new hazards, reflected about the practical difficulties in performing work in accordance with documented procedures and reframed their work practices and developed safer ways of working. Workers described how the participatory video capturing the way they work enabled them to have more meaningful input into H&S decision-making than they had previously experienced. Workers also expressed a strong preference for receiving H&S information in a visual format and commented that video was better suited to communicating H&S ‘know how’ than written documents. The research is significant in providing initial evidence that participatory video has the potential to improve H&S in construction.
Knowledge management came for some as the proverbial bolt from the blue. This paper traces the history of knowledge management from its modest beginnings in the early/mid eighties to its current status. It shows that knowledge management is, to a certain extent, the logical next step in a sequence of societal developments that has already been going on for a very long time. The likely future of knowledge management is explored along four perspectives: The management practices perspective, the information technology perspective, the organizational efforts perspective and the development, supply and adoption rate perspective. The conclusion is that knowledge management methods and technologies will, until the turn of the century, be provided in a ‘technology push’ manner. After that time a more ‘demand pull’ way is foreseen. For the average company the full operation period will probably be in the first quarter of the next century. And, as will happen with every new approach, it will become outdated somewhere in the second quarter of the next century.
Developments in safety management on large UK construction sites have seen a paradigm shift from enforcement-based systems to safety-culture programmes, which seek to engage with the workforce to create fully cooperative and safety-conscious sites. Founded in social constructionism, recent research sought out the master discourses of safety on large UK construction sites through the examination of safety signage, talk around safety and safety documentation. Two of the most prominent discourses of safety on sites were found to be safety as enforcement and safety as engagement, reflecting the change in safety management strategies. These discourses were found to be interrelated in their constructions of safety, yet also varied in their associations with practice, responsibility, social interactions and the management hierarchy of the sites. These findings develop the current understanding of safety found on sites, with relation to the hierarchical structures of safety management and the discourses of enforcement and engagement in practice. The findings have significance for the safety practices of large UK contractors in developing and improving their safety-culture programmes, as well as suggesting potential new directions in the academic research of safety in construction.
PurposeThe aim of the research is to improve lessons learned practices within construction contractor organisations. This will result in contractors' project teams having access to the most relevant lessons at the most appropriate time, in the most appropriate format.ScopeThe research was based on the responses of 41 large UK contractor organisations to a questionnaire survey, detailed interviews with nine companies and three focus groups. The respondents were senior and middle managers variously involved in business improvement, knowledge management, and technical services.ResultsThe questionnaire survey identified methods, tools and processes used to collect lessons learned. The interviews and the focus groups uncovered the diverging requirements of corporate vs. site-based staff. The data contributed to the development of a project learning model and a conceptual model from which a Project Learning Roadmap was derived to support business leaders to improve their project lessons learned processes. This will enable organisations to develop individual solutions tailored to stakeholders' needs.
Organizational knowing is fundamentally a collective endeavour through which heterogeneous materials and entities, such as ideas, concepts, artifacts, texts, persons, norms, and traditions are mobilized, modified, translated, distorted, exposed, used, ignored or hidden in view of some practical accomplishment, such as safety in a construction site. Safety as a form of organizational expertise is therefore situated in the system of ongoing practices, has both explicit and tacit dimensions, is relational and mediated by artifacts, that is, it is material as well as mental and representational. Using examples derived from the observation data we will discuss how safety-related knowledge is constituted, institutionalized, and continually redefined and renegotiated within the organizing process through the interplay between action and reflexivity.
This paper explores and critically reviews the ability of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) to improve the transferability of knowledge. The aim here is to look beyond knowledge transfer at a general level. By distinguishing between codified knowledge and tacit knowledge, a more thorough understanding of knowledge transfer is sought, and in particular of the role of ICTs in this process. ICTs favour the transfer of knowledge that can be codified and reduced to data. Of central concern here is what role, if any, do ICTs have in the transfer of tacit knowledge? This paper raises issues concerning the relationship between knowledge transfer, ICTs and trust.
Organizational culture is increasingly recognized as a major barrier to leveraging intellectual assets. This article identifies four ways in which culture influences the behaviors central to knowledge creation, sharing, and use. First, culture-and particularly subcultures-shape assumptions about what knowledge is and which knowledge is worth managing. Second, culture defines the relationships between l individual and organizational knowledge, determining who is expected to control specific knowledge, as well as who must share it and who can hoard it. Third, culture creates the context for social interaction that determines how knowledge will be used in particular situations. Fourth, culture shapes the processes by which new knowledge-with its accompanying uncertaintieswis created, legitimated, and distributed in organizations These four perspectives suggest specific actions managers can take to assess the different aspects of culture most likely to influence knowledge-related behaviors. This diagnosis is the critical first step in developing a strategy and specific interventions to align the firm's culture in support of more effective knowledge use.
This paper discusses the fact that US coal mining organisations are losing the knowledge they need in order to be able to respond to emergencies. The authors note that knowledge management provides a useful perspective from which to view the problem, but that the debate about what constitutes knowledge should be broadened to include a debate about what constitutes management. It is argued here that knowledge is actually shared knowing distributed across group members; that such knowledge can be managed by cultivating it; and that narrative is the medium through which this may be done. The paper then examines NIOSH research that has attempted to use such an alternative knowledge management approach to help potential mine emergency responders better deal with the predicaments they are likely to encounter on-site.
This research sought to examine the opinions, attitudes and perceptions of construction workers on the skills, knowledge and behaviours that contribute to safety culture. Questionnaire data from workers on construction sites suggested that workers’ perceptions of the primary characteristics of safety culture validated accepted precepts of safety culture found in safety culture theory, such as communication and was at variance with several safety critical leadership positions. Analysis of the 107 questionnaire responses suggested that workers saw the four most influential safety critical positions to be at construction site level and not at ‘head office’. Ranked according to preference these are: Occupational Health and Safety Officers, Foremen/Supervisors, Trade Union Representatives and the workers themselves. There was no evidence in this survey of an expected level of recognition of safety critical leadership positions at executive management level. Worker perceptions of safety culture promotion included training and education, a strong knowledge of rules and regulations, good communication and interpersonal skills and behaviour and actions that enforce and monitor safety.
Health and safety (H&S) statistics have plateaued in developed countries. H&S is frequently loosely coupled with project management. The challenge is to induce greater commitment to improve the role of contractors and subcontractors as systems integrators and providers respectively. Awareness creation and information sharing about H&S initiatives, near misses and incidents are prioritized at operational meetings at firm and project levels. This is supported by communication tools, including email alerts, Yammer and intranet sites, often grounded in a safety management systems (SMS). These systems are based in information processing. Converting information into applied knowledge requires a knowledge management system (KMS) and literature on KMS shows they are poorly developed in construction. Empirical evidence from main contractors and subcontractors collated in this research shows H&S is focused on information sharing rather than knowledge application. H&S is therefore disconnected from nascent KMS. The challenge from systems integration and solution provision is to align H&S SMS and KMS to reduce H&S incidents by systematically app
Abstract
Purpose – The focus of this research is the extent to which service design is addressed by the client and its supply chain at a programme level into one functional capability, knowledge management, to share knowledge across projects and organizational actors.
Design/methodology/approach – The interpretative methodology employing two methods of engaged scholarship, namely action research and engaged research, is applied. The data is analyzed using cognitive mapping to identify the extent of alignment of perceptions.
Findings - The findings show that the client and its supply chain are very transactional in their management minimizing investment in knowledge management and programme management. Lack of commitment and cultural leadership are present, hence the over-reliance on individuals to take responsibility for knowledge sharing and application. Service design thinking can help develop a holistic approach to learning from projects.
Research implications – The study underlines the links between the concepts of service design and knowledge management. The findings emphasize the importance of developing a holistic approach to knowledge management through the lenses of service design. The organizations must view knowledge management as a process and build capabilities at a programme level to make knowledge sharing an integral part of the work culture across projects.
Originality/value – The study contributes to the subject of knowledge management in construction industry by mobilizing the concept of service design to examine how knowledge management systems and procedures are embedded in the client and across its supply chain.
Keywords: Service Design, Knowledge Management, Programme Management, Supply Chain, Systems Thinking, Cognitive Mapping.
Paper type: Research paper
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to address hierarchies in a large program of projects. It explores cultivation of communities of practice (CoP) within a hierarchical client organization that manages multi-billion-euro infrastructure programs and projects.
Design/methodology/approach – This paper is based on an exploratory longitudinal case study approach involving action research. In-depth semi-structured interviews, company records, industry reports and observation from a case study in the hierarchical bureaucracy were translated into the language of cognitive maps for software analysis and subsequent interpretation.
Findings – The findings highlight the importance of hierarchy constraints and program management practices in project-based firms. The involvement of senior management in CoP cultivation reinforced the community’s contribution to strategic value creation in the firm under scrutiny.
Research limitations/implications – This paper mobilizes the concepts of boundary spanning and loose coupling as a way of analyzing the role of CoPs in bureaucratic hierarchies to promote learning and knowledge transfer. The results of the study suggest that application of those concepts can contribute to sustainability of CoPs in hierarchical organizations by giving them social space to span horizontal and vertical boundaries.
Practical implications – The authors practically contribute to the field by demonstrating the process and the impact of CoP sponsors’ engagement in their cultivation. This was enabled through the research-oriented action research component. The paper also concludes that cognitive mapping may provide a useful addition
to engaged research, potentially simulating and influencing change in practice.
Originality/value – The academic contribution concerns understanding the roles of hierarchies, program management and CoP cultivation in project-based firms. It offers clear guidelines for managers of hierarchical bureaucracies.
Introduction
The existence of a positive association between safety climate and the safety behavior of sharp-end workers in high-risk organizations is supported by a considerable body of research. Previous research has primarily analyzed two components of safety behavior, namely safety compliance and safety participation. The present study extends previous research by looking into the relationship between safety climate and another component of safety behavior, namely mindful safety practices. Mindful safety practices are defined as the ability to be aware of critical factors in the environment and to act appropriately when dangers arise.
Method
Regression analysis was used to examine whether mindful safety practices are, like compliance and participation, promoted by a positive safety climate, in a questionnaire-based study of 5712 sharp-end workers in the oil and gas industry.
Results
The analysis revealed that a positive safety climate promotes mindful safety practices.
Conclusions
The regression model accounted for roughly 31% of the variance in mindful safety practices. The most important safety climate factor was safety leadership.
Practical applications
The findings clearly demonstrate that mindful safety practices are highly context-dependent, hence, manageable and susceptible to change. In order to improve safety climate in a direction which is favorable for mindful safety practices, the results demonstrate that it is important to give the fundamental features of safety climate high priority and in particular that of safety leadership.
Introduction:
Falls are the leading cause of death and third leading cause of non-fatal injuries in construction. In an effort to combat these numbers, The National Campaign to Prevent Falls in Construction began in April 2012. As the campaign gained momentum, a week called the National Safety Stand-Down to Prevent Falls was launched to draw attention to the campaign and its goals. The purpose of this paper is to examine the reach of the Stand-Down and lessons learned from its implementation.
Methods:
The Occupational Safety & Health Administration offered a certificate of participation during the Stand-Down. To print the certificate, respondents provided information about their company and stand-down event. CPWR - The Center for Construction Research and Training conducted analyses on the data collected to assess reach and extent of participation.
Results:
In 2014, 4,882 stand-downs were reported. The total number reported in 2015 was 3,759. The number of participants, however, increased from 770,193 in 2014 to 1,041,307 in 2015.
Discussion:
The Stand-Down successfully reached the construction industry and beyond. Respondents were enthusiastic and participated nationally and internationally in variety of activities. They also provided significant feedback that will be influential in future campaign planning.
Conclusion:
Numbers of Stand-Downs and participants for both years are estimated to be substantially higher than the data recorded from the certificate database. While we cannot determine impact, the reach of the Stand-Down has surpassed expectations.
Practical applications:
The data gathered provide support for the continuation of the Stand-Down. Campaign planners incorporated findings into future Stand-Down planning, materials creation, and promotion. This analysis also provides insight on how organizations can partner to create targeted national campaigns that include activities stakeholders in the construction industry respond to, and can be used to replicate our efforts for other safety and health initiatives in construction and other industries.
Purpose
The paper aims to clearly differentiate knowledge sharing (KS) and knowledge transfer (KT) besides exemplifying their interconnections to minimize the current confusions in the knowledge management (KM) literature.
Design/methodology/approach
An extensive literature review method was used to analyse relevant literature on both KS and KT to clearly delineate their differences and their interconnections.
Findings
The paper found that KS is a subset of KT (using personalization strategy), whereas KT as a whole is a broader concept, if compared with KS. However, KS is not one of the immediate processes involved in KT (using codification strategy). The processes involved in KS and KT differ according to the strategy used (in KT) and perspective chosen (in KS). Other findings include KS (unidirectional) as reflective concept (viewed so far), whereas KS (bidirectional), KT (personalization) and KT (codification) as formative concepts.
Research limitations/implications
The findings of this paper were based on the review of selected relevant articles only.
Practical Implications
The paper will minimize the current confusions in the KM literature and will assist future researches on both KS and KT to ensure what these concepts entail to avoid construct underrepresentation.
Originality/value
As compared to previous attempts, the present paper has shown the interconnections between KS and KT, as well as the differences based on the two perspectives of KS (unidirectional/bidirectional) and the two strategies of KT (personalization/codification), and such effort is new in the literature.
Background:
Safety training is promoted as a tool to prevent workplace injury; however, little is known about the safety training experiences young workers get on-the-job. Furthermore, nothing is known about what methods they think would be the most helpful for learning about safe work practices.
Objectives:
To compare safety training methods teens get on the job to those safety training methods teens think would be the best for learning workplace safety, focusing on age differences.
Methods:
A cross-sectional survey was administered to students in two large high schools in spring 2011.
Results:
Seventy percent of working youth received safety training. The top training methods that youth reported getting at work were safety videos (42%), safety lectures (25%), and safety posters/signs (22%). In comparison to the safety training methods used, the top methods youth wanted included videos (54%), hands-on (47%), and on-the-job demonstrations (34%). This study demonstrated that there were differences in training methods that youth wanted by age; with older youth seemingly wanting more independent methods of training and younger teens wanting more involvement.
Conlcusion:
Results indicate that youth want methods of safety training that are different from what they are getting on the job. The differences in methods wanted by age may aid in developing training programs appropriate for the developmental level of working youth.
Communities of practice have been presented as the panacea of organizational learning. Building up on three case studies in different organizations characterized by different internal contexts, this article pushes the logic one step further by arguing that communities of practice can also be unique collaboration spaces within bureaucracies. Their main property is the ambiguity of their relationship with organizational control mechanisms and structures. Communities play with the rules, they can be adaptable and as such can build resilience within the organization. But this ambiguity, being the foundation of their capacity to introduce cooperation within organizations, is also difficult to maintain. Cultivating communities of practice thus becomes a delicate task for managers who must be able to adopt complex and contradictory behaviours. Five roles that can be fulfilled by management are analysed: stimulation, facilitation, support, control and recognition. Far from the generic recommendations that can be found in the literature to date, the findings indicate that the degree of intervention from management is highly dependent on the internal organizational context. This article thus provides a contingent framework to the cultivation of communities of practice.
This article investigates the process of knowledge sharing between project teams and uses a case study approach. This is especially relevant, as organizations face both the needs for separating work into projects and integrating knowledge created in projects into the organization. The results provided by the analysis technique of GABEK® indicate that, although projects create boundaries, employees and project team leaders use formal mechanisms and develop informal practices for knowledge sharing between project teams. Furthermore, the article identifies organizational cultural characteristics enacted in these practices that can stimulate the discussion in “knowledge culture research” regarding the relationship of organizational cultural characteristics and (specific) knowledge processes.
Despite significant research, there is still little agreement over how to define safety culture or of what it is comprised. Due to this lack of agreement, much of the safety culture research has little more than safety management strategies in common. There is, however, a degree of acceptance of the close relationship between safety culture and organisational culture. Organisational culture can be described using traditional views of culture drawn from the anthropology and cultural psychology literature. However, the safety culture literature rarely ventures beyond organisational culture into discussions of these more traditional concepts of culture. There is a need to discuss how these concepts of culture can be applied to safety culture to provide greater understanding of safety culture and additional means by which to approach safety in the workplace. This review explores how three traditional conceptualisations of culture; the normative, anthropological and pragmatist conceptualisations, can and have been be applied to safety culture. Finally the review proposes a synthesised conceptualisation of safety culture which can be used to provide greater depth and practical applicability of safety culture, by increasing our understanding of the interactions between cultural and contextual variables in a given workplace and the effect they have on safety.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between health and safety (H&S) and organisational culture in project business, in particular to explore the validity of current cognitive emphases of linear organisational maturity towards a “safety culture”, and normative models and prescriptions.
Design/methodology/approach
An interpretative methodology is employed, informed by ethnography (Douglas' cultural theory) and clinical consultative (Schein's model) approaches, using case‐based analysis comprising seven project business organisations.
Findings
The cases were characterized by diverse organisational cultures and diverse H&S practices informed by habits and intuitive behaviour, as well as cognitive strategies and decisions for implementation. H&S was not the top priority for these cases. Good performance related to alignment with the prevailing culture rather than pursuit of a “safety culture”.
Research limitations/implications
The term “safety culture” is misdirected; greater attention on what is, rather than normative models and prescription, is necessary. Generalisation is limited by the case‐based approach.
Practical implications
Practitioners need to pay more attention to organisational culture and alignment of H&S practices, to the unintended consequences of prescriptions, and robust systems.
Social implications
The way activities are conducted requires awareness of the prevailing culture in order to align the structure and processes to the culture for effective operations. These implications are general, and within project business and management, Failure to do so carries increased risk of failing to satisfy business and broader stakeholder interests.
Originality/value
Anomalies in H&S research and practice are challenged, especially “safety culture” and normative approaches. The contribution is the combination employment of the Schein and Douglas models to understand organisational culture and H&S cultural alignment.
In a safety perspective, exchange of experiences and information within and across departmental, organizational, and geographical boundaries is important. Valuable knowledge may reside in different organizational units and locations, and the ability to learn from failures thus depends on efficient knowledge exchange processes. This paper focuses on sharing and application of knowledge in a high risk, inter-organizational setting. Based on data from a survey with respondents from a petroleum operating company and eight of its main contractors, the paper investigates the antecedents and effects of knowledge sharing behavior. The overall results show that work experience, training, intrinsic motivation, job autonomy, location, and management support influence the level of knowledge sharing behavior, which again affects knowledge exploitation related to safe work conduct. However, the analyses also reveal that work location is an important conditioning variable, as the effects of education, training, job autonomy, and management support on knowledge sharing behavior depend on whether the respondents work offshore or onshore. An implication is that work location is a significant factor to consider when initiatives for improving knowledge sharing behavior are to be designed and implemented.
It is a major challenge for project-based organizations to learn across project boundaries by making project-level knowledge available to the organization as a whole. This study argues that project teams' social capital is conducive to overcoming barriers to learning in project-based organizations. Based on a large-scale analysis of engineering projects in Germany, the study shows that project teams' social capital, i.e. the intra-organizational social ties of project teams with their colleagues outside the project, compensates for project teams' lack of opportunity, motivation, and ability to make project-learnings available to the organization as a whole. By contributing to overcoming barriers to learning in project-based organizations, social capital represents an important driver of organizational learning about market conditions, products and technologies as well as project management.
Purpose
The purpose this paper is to examine a prevailing assumption that the culture of organisations is homogenous. It explores the culture of one project organisation with multiple offices.
Design/methodology/approach
A quantitative questionnaire and qualitative research method of cultural immersion was used. The ethnographic Douglas grid‐group was used to filter the findings: isolate, competitive, hierarchical and egalitarian positions. Hofstede's dimensions were overlaid to enhance the analysis.
Findings
The research found distinct cultural differences in the same organisation. Competitive and hierarchical factors are found with some evidence of egalitarian behaviours. Regional cultural factors affected behaviour and organisational practices. Individuals actively negotiated dominant behaviours and cultural norms. The Hofstede dimensions are in evidence around roles and functions. The findings showed a stronger influence from the dominant social culture of the region than the organisational culture.
Research limitations/implications
Organisations cannot be assumed as homogeneous. The influence of the dominant social culture and competing cultural influences within organisation requires further analysis.
Practical implications
Generating a coherent organisational culture with aligned norms is a difficult management problem, especially for an organisation with multiple offices. Establishing consistent norms also poses challenges for the management of projects.
Originality/value
The tendency to assume cultural homogeneity requires closer attention in organisational research and practice. This paper employed a unique combination of methods to explore the issue. The primary contribution is a demonstration of the need for practitioners and researchers to pay more attention to the dynamic formation and effects of culture in organisations and for projects.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine how people can conceive learning and knowledge management processes within project teams and provides conceptual guidance on the most effective way to managerially approach these important and often neglected project issues.
Design/methodology/approach
This is a conceptual paper which draws on and dissects a very broad and relevant literature on learning and knowledge management.
Findings
Based on the analysis conducted, and with an eye to improving project learning, project outcomes and participant learning skills, the key argument of this paper is that participants in project teams must acknowledge and pursue a more socially oriented trajectory in their learning and knowledge management activities. Therein, the participants, their project practices and the organization of the project environment become the focal points of attention and action.
Research limitations/implications
This paper puts forward a conceptually grounded argument for a greater practical emphasis to be placed on the social systems in learning and knowledge management processes in projects. The opportunity exists to test this argument in further empirical project studies.
Practical implications
This paper provides a foundation for project practitioners to critically reflect on their current learning and knowledge management attitudes and practices, while encouraging their attention towards the management of their project social systems.
Originality/value
This paper confronts conventional and limited perspectives about learning and managing the flow of knowledge within projects, and serves to stimulate participant and researcher reflection on more socially oriented approaches towards these project activities.
How, if at all, is it possible to assess aspects of organizational culture and the way culture influences safety? This question concerns the possibility of proactive assessments: whether it is possible to ‘predict’ if an organization is prone to having major accidents on the basis of safety culture assessments. The article presents an empirical analysis of this question by comparing the results of a quantitative safety culture assessment on the Norwegian oil and gas platform Snorre Alpha, with the results of a qualitative investigation after a major incident on the platform. The two descriptions of the same culture are dramatically different. The lack of concurrence between the two descriptions suggests that safety culture surveys may have little predictive value.
The critical challenge for occupational safety, health, and ergonomics (OSHE) in contemporary industry is management of the existing individual (personal) knowledge, structural knowledge (i.e., knowledge codified into manuals, reports, databases, and data warehouses), and organizational knowledge (activity of learning within the organization) in the vast domain of practical applications. Therefore, the principles and tools of knowledge management (KM) should be used to facilitate the management of OSHE. The authors discuss the requirements for effective knowledge management, review the existing models of KM and their structures, and introduce a model for KM in OSHE. The proposed model of KM for OSHE is based on a strategy that establishes knowledge as the central resource to achieve the goals of OSHE management. The model includes the systems of organizational knowledge, organizational learning (knowledge creation, distribution, elaboration, and consolidation), development of knowledge workers, KM processes (review, conceptualization, reflection, and acting), and relevant information-technologies. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Hum Factors Man 16: 309–319, 2006.
Three years ago, I read Michael Polanyi's contribution—as a philosopher—to a symposium entitled Scientific Outlook: Its Sickness and Cure. In a brilliant, penetrating, and delightfully humorous criticism of R. W. Gerard's1 biological contribution, he unerringly diagnosed the sickness of medicine:
The fact that a so learned, ingenious and imaginative survey of living beings should deal so perfunctorily with some of the most important questions concerning them shows a fundamental deficiency of human thinking.... If a rat laps up a solution of saccharine, the rational explanation of this lies in the act that the solution tastes sweet and that the rat likes that. The tasting and liking are facts that physics and chemistry as known today cannot explain. Nothing is relevant to biology, even at the lowest level of life, unless it bears on the achievements of living beings... and distinctions unknown to physics and chemistry... The current idea of
The economic prosperity of individual countries around the world has fuelled the transportation of migrant workers for centuries. The phenomenon of globalisation and with it cheaper and quicker forms of international travel has transformed the nature of migrant worker involvement in construction projects. For example, Irish ‘navvies’ have traditionally made up a large percentage of the UK construction workforce. However, political changes in the neighbouring Republic of Ireland leading to an economic boom have kept native workers at home. This gap in the UK workforce has coincided with an expansion of the European Union and there has been an influx of Polish, Lithuanian and other A8 ascension countries’ nationals.The change, over a relatively short period of time, less than 10 years, has put pressure on the management of health and safety at a time when the UK construction industry was progressing from relative successes in tackling safety issues to dealing with the health of construction workers. The challenge of converting the health and safety systems to accommodate a multi national/ cultural workforce is being addressed using initiatives such as, translation of health and safety materials, use of interpreters and an increased use of visual methods for communicating health and safety messages. There is little scientific evidence to support the effectiveness of these initiatives and investigations into these methods and the affects of the migrant workforce on health and safety are proposed.
The identification of accident consequences is of great importance in cost calculations. Various classifications of consequences have been published, but there is a need to develop them further. The Accident Consequence Tree (ACT) Method was developed on the basis of the fault tree method for calculating accident costs. With the aid of the consequence tree it is possible to identify the consequences that an accident causes to the injured person, the company and to the national economy. The consequence tree consists of 128 branches altogether. The ACT Method was applied to workplace accidents which were followed during the course of 12 months in 18 Finnish furniture factories of different sizes and production types. A real-time data collection system was organized. The foremen were trained to fill out the follow-up form. The foremen and injured persons were interviewed by the researchers. The 214 accidents registered were lost-time injuries; there were no permanent disabilities. The accidents caused a total of 4300 identified consequences according to the ACT Method, on an average 20 consequences per accident. Every accident resulted in an injury, temporary disability, future production loss, medical treatment, and loss of company productivity. Lost production time was the most notable consequence to the companies. The accidents caused 472 visits to health care centres, on average 2.2 visits per accident. Two accidents led to hospitalization. As the material consisted only of temporary disabilities, this must be taken into account when generalizations are being made. Permanent disabilities and fatalities do occur and they probably cause more losses. Theoretically an accident process should include one additional phase — a consequence phase.
Definitions of safety culture abound, but they variously refer to the safety-related values, attitudes, beliefs, risk perceptions and behaviours of all employees. This assembly may seem too inclusive to be meaningful, but each represents a different level of processing and the choice for measurement (or intervention) is more pragmatic than theoretical. The present study addresses mainly attitudes, but also reported behaviours. This is done using a 120-item questionnaire covering eight domains of safety in three nuclear power stations. Principal components analysis yields 28 factors — all but four of which are correlated with one or more of nine criteria of accident history. Differences by gender, age, shifts/days and work areas are revealed, but these are confounded by type of job and ANOVAS are applied to clarify the main sources of variation. The effects on safety culture of a number of organisational components are also explored. For example, the role of safety in team briefings, management style, work pressure versus safety, etc. It is concluded that personnel safety surveys can usefully be applied to deliver a multi-perspective, comprehensive and economical assessment of the current state of a safety culture and also to explore the dynamic inter-relationships of its ‘working parts’.
Safety in the chemical industry is a major issue in a thickly populated country like India. The study was carried out to determine the safety climate factors in the chemical industry in Kerala, India. A survey using a questionnaire was conducted among 2536 employees in eight major accident hazard chemical industrial units in Kerala. The study population included workers and first line supervisors at the lowest end of the management. 75% of the data collected was subjected to principal component factor analysis with varimax rotation using SPSS program. This revealed 8 factors which together explained 52.15% of the total variance. Internal consistency (Cronbach Alpha) across items in each of the 8 factors and that of the total scale were found acceptable. The model was tested with the remaining data by running confirmatory factor analysis using the AMOS 4.0 structural equation modeling program and was found to produce a good fit. The safety climate scores calculated were found to have significant negative correlation with self-reported accident rates revealing good predictive validity. One way ANOVA results show that companies’ mean safety climate scores differ significantly from each other indicating that organizations have different safety climate levels. Tests were also conducted to find out the effects of qualification, age, job category and experience of respondents on their perceptions and attitudes about safety.
This paper discusses how cognitive maps might be analyzed for the purpose of structuring problems or issues. The paper suggests what the various analysis methods imply for an operational research practitioner when helping a client work on a “messy” issue or problem.
Even though intrafirm transfers of knowledge are often laborious, time consuming, and difficult, current conceptions treat them as essentially costless and instantaneous. When acknowledged, difficulty is an anomaly in the way transfers are modeled rather than a characteristic feature of the transfer itself. One first step toward incorporating difficulty in the analysis of knowledge transfer is to recognize that a transfer is not an act, as typically modeled, but a process. This article offers a process model of knowledge transfer. The model identifies stages of transfer and factors that are expected to correlate with difficulty at different stages of the transfer. The general expectation is that factors that affect the opportunity to transfer are more likely to predict difficulty during the initiation phase, whereas factors that affect the execution of the transfer are more likely to predict difficulty during subsequent implementation phases. Measures of stickiness are developed for each stage of the transfer to explore the predictive power of different factors at different stages of the process. A cross-sectional analysis of primary data collected through a two-step survey of 122 transfers of organizational practices within eight firms illustrates the applicability of the model and suggests several issues for further research.