Safety-specific transformational leadership, safety climate and occupational accidents

Muhammad Zeeshan Mirza,Ahmad Shahrul Nizam Isha

doi:10.47263/jasem.4(2)04

Abstract

Despite the fact that safety-specific transformational leadership had been reported to have favorable outcomes on workplace safety, there is limited work on identifying its role in decreasing occupational accidents at workplace. The current study looks to fill this void by proposing safety-specific leadership approach to combat occupational accidents via safety climate. Data were collected from 270 production workers of Oil and Gas Industry across four states of Malaysia. Results showed strong support for our suppositions. Safety climate mediated the relationship between safety-specific leadership and occupational accidents. The supposition linking safety-specific transformational leadership to safety climate and safety climate to occupational accidents also found considerable support. The results are discussed in the light of previous literature and the contributions made by the study.

Highlights

According to Hepburn, Kelloway, and Franche (2010) occupational accidents may or may not require small medical treatment but does not require absence from work
The validity of items considered adequate if their loadings are equal or higher than 0.7, if loading of an item is between 0.4-0.7 than it should be considered for removal only if it can improve average variance extracted (AVE) or composite reliability (CR), and if the item loading is lower than 0.4 the item should be deleted (Hair et al, 2016; Kock, 2014)
The first hypothesis of the study assumed that safety-specific transformational leadership will enhance the safety climate perceptions of the workers

Summary

Introduction

According to Hepburn, Kelloway, and Franche (2010) occupational accidents may or may not require small medical treatment but does not require absence from work. The definition clarifies the fact that occupational accidents does not cause injuries which keeps workers away from work or for which compensation has to be paid by the organization. Occupational accidents cover a wide spread safety situation which might not be covered by occupational injuries which are only recorded when a worker remains away from work or compensation is paid to him/her. Accidents usually happen because of some existing dangers which make system vulnerable (Reason, 2000). These can be the unsafe work environment, job demands or lack of resources which can cause accidents at workplace (Nahrgang, Morgeson, & Hofmann, 2011). In addition to that organizational involvement and physical environment (Oliver, Cheyne, Tomás, & Cox, 2002), psychological distress (Siu, Kong, Phillips, & Leung, 2004) were strongly related to accidents, and safety climate was reported to be negatively related to occupational accidents (Zohar, 2000)

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