Safety Management Practices and Occupational Health and Safety Performance: An Empirical Review

Abstract

his paper aims to investigate how the relationship between safety management practices and occupational health and safety performance have been examined in the literature, and which future research areas can be recommended. This systematic literature review applied the matrix method to examine major literature in safety management practices and occupational health and safety performance. A total of 24 papers in English peer-reviewed from 21 journals were selected and analyzed. The synthesis of these empirical studies revealed the following: The relationship between safety management practices and occupational health and safety performance has mostly been investigated quantitatively in many countries and sectors; management commitment to safety, safety rules, and procedures and safety training are still most commonly used safety management practices to improve occupational health and safety performance. In this study, research articles were selected only from English journals; therefore, some research articles in other languages might not be included. The findings of this study can be used to develop a safety management model to reduce the rate of injuries, accidents, and near misses in high hazardous risk organizations. Overall, the findings provide Safety management practices overview that practitioners use to manage safety performance. There are only a few systematic literature reviews available on safety management practices, occupational health, and safety performance. This paper is among the first systematic literature reviews to analyze how safety management practices have been associated with occupational health and safety performance and provide potential research avenues.