Interactions between organisational roles and environmental hazards: The case of safety in the Chinese coal industry

Abstract

This paper adopts a symbiotic approach to explore psychological perspectives about safety in the Chinese coal mining sector. A questionnaire survey was administered to 1094 respondents, consisting of 642 frontline miners, 251 managers, and 201 supervisors from six coalmines in China from August to December 2017. Results showed that different organisational roles have extremely low levels of symbiotic interaction across the operational environment, especially with the natural and macro-social systems. Conflicting perceptions of value were present across the organisational roles. Additionally, the research noted an absence for all five-dimensional affinities for each of the respondent groups. Finally, the symbiotic state across organisational roles was mostly in sub-health state (45.20%), with an unacceptable level of symbiotic state reaching 35.44%. To further promote health and safety performance in the Chinese coal sector, to reduce the structured gaps between organisational roles and improve the conditions of understanding about hazards, safety communication and duty of care among managers within the organisational structure is required.