Managers' attitudes and the occurrence of accidents in a telephone company

Abstract

Eyssen, G.McK., Hoffmann, J.E., Spengler, R., 1980. Managers' attitudes and the occurrence of accidents in a telephone company. Journal of Occupational Accidents, 2: 291—304. The study explores the association between certain social factors and the occurrence of accidents among construction and maintenance workers in a Canadian telephone company. Controlling for the age and work experience of employees, regression analysis was used to describe the relationship between the injury rate in various administrative districts and two sets of factors, the attitudes of managers towards work and safety, and the social environment at the worksite, including the nature of employee-management relationships. The findings suggest that managers may play a role in industrial accidents and are consistent with the predictions of the Health Belief Model upon which the attitudes studied were based. Managers in districts with low injury rates were more likely to believe that their men had a relatively high risk of accidents, that safety was of more concern to them than other work issues, that they themselves with the tools and practices at their disposal were capable of preventing accidents, and that their ability to carry on safety work was enhanced by incentives rather than hindered by barriers.