Abstract
Organizational injuries and accident has become a major issue in many countries especially among foreign workers in the construction sector. This paper aims to examine the safety behavior of foreign workers in the Jeddah construction industry by examining the direct relationships between safety management practices (priority of safety, safety communication, and work pressure) on safety compliance and safety participative behavior. Also, social support was tested as a moderator on these relationships. Partial Least Square Techniques 3.0 (PLS) approach was used to test the hypotheses. The finding showed that the priority of safety and safety communication predicts both safety compliance and participative behavior in this study. While the relationships between work pressure and safety compliance and participation are not significant. Results for the moderation effects of social support revealed that the relationship between safety communication and work pressure on safety participation was influenced by social support. The finding in this study provides empirical support of social support as a moderator and contributes to the role of social exchange theory and can assist construction practitioners in Saudi Arabia on how to improve construction workers safety behavior. Finally, this study discusses theoretical and practical implications, as well as recommendations for future research.
Highlights
Every year, hundreds of thousands of employees are injured at work, while billions of dollars are consumed as a result of medical costs, disability payments, increased insurance premiums and decreased productivity (Occupational Safety & Health Administration, 2015; Xia, Xie, Griffin, Ye, & Yuan, 2020)
All the respondents are male 100% (n = 282), which is likely due to the fact that only men are employed on constructions site in Saudi Arabia
The results indicated that Priority of Safety (β = 0.133; t = 2.166; p < 0.05), Safety Communication (β = 0.156; t = 3.678; p < 0.01) and Work Pressure (β = 0.291; t = 4.250; p < 0.01) have positive effects on safety compliance
Summary
Hundreds of thousands of employees are injured at work, while billions of dollars are consumed as a result of medical costs, disability payments, increased insurance premiums and decreased productivity (Occupational Safety & Health Administration, 2015; Xia, Xie, Griffin, Ye, & Yuan, 2020). The financial cost of such safety-related incidents is estimated to be approximately US$1 billion per week (Occupational Safety & Health Administration, 2015). Such occupational accidents are associated with huge economic and social costs. The statistics presented by the General Organization for Social Insurance (GOSI, 2012) show that between 2004 and 2010, the number of serious injuries totalled 261,076 annually, which is equivalent to 3413.9 injuries per 100,000 employees on average. A comparative study of cases of work-related injury and death worldwide using the available statistical evidence suggests that Saudi Arabia recorded the highest number of major injuries (3117) as well as 28 cases of death out of every 100,000 workers injured in 2008 (Alasamri, Chrisp, & Bowles, 2012)
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