Culture Of Safety Case Study

Connections to the Literature and Practice
The finding that the Culture of Safety positively relates to the client’s perception of the operational and financial performance of a project is consistent with the literature finding of the unintended positive impacts of a culture of accident prevention (Mossink & de Greef, 2002). Interestingly, we found no trade-off between building a culture of safety and performance. Indeed, building a culture of safety is a low-risk, high-return strategy that during usual times improves both financial and “client grading” operational performance and even during bad times (injuries) does not hurt performance.

Further, our finding that Safety Plan positively relates to operational performance on the project, as
A strong culture of accident prevention on a project enhances performance through less absenteeism, more motivated personnel, improved morale (Fernández-Muñiz et al., 2009; Mossink & de Greef, 2002) and better organizational culture (Barling et al., 2002; Griffin & Neal, 2000; O’Donnell, 2000). Furthermore, we found support that Safety Performance accentuates the connection between a Culture of Safety and financial performance. This reinforces the notion that, practically, corporate responsibility initiatives such as promoting a culture of safety are critical to financial
This could be a consequence of the certifications not being a sensitive enough measure of a Culture of Safety, as 57 percent (19 of 33) of projects had zero managers with a safety certification. Moreover, a simple count of certificates obtained, is not a measure of quality, such that an emphasis on certifications might signal, “checking the box” rather than truly paying attention to a culture of safety. More concretely, it could be that the time, effort, and costs required for supervisors to achieve the STS Certification might somehow negatively affect project profitability. Happily, the Observations measure of a Culture of Safety has a stronger influence on Project Performance than the Certifications measure of a Culture of Safety, suggesting that our findings hold.

Finally, at 33, the total number of observations is relatively small. While this quantity approaches the population of possible observations within the three-year window chosen, increasing the n would undoubtedly increase statistical power and provide results that are more robust. Similarly, although studying projects within one firm and one industry focuses the study on project performance, rather than on potentially confounding firm or industry variables, our insights would be even more persuasive and generalizable if the results