Critical antecedents for construction organizational learning concerning safety knowledge from success and accidents

Abstract

To address the challenges of high accident rate in construction industry, construction companies tend to capture safety knowledge by learning from success and accidents. Thus, this paper aims to extract critical antecedents affecting organizational learning concerning safety knowledge (OLSK), from both success companies and accidents, and to recommend strategies for improving this learning in construction companies. Multiple case studies were conducted with focus group interviews and questionnaires as primary data collection instruments. Based on literature, the critical antecedents influencing OLSK include: (1) external factors covering market leadership, similarity, magnitude of accidents loss, information quality; (2) internal factors incorporating leadership, strategy, supportive culture, incentives and motivation, project requirement. By adopting PLS, analytical-contrast results indicate that internal factors present more effect on learning from success than that from accidents while external ones have opposite effect. The research contributes to literatures of organizational learning by showing critical antecedents in the construction context.