Q2. What is the importance of the three dimensions of safety climate for managers?
In other words, senior management commitment to safety is particularly critical for minimizing employee risk behavior when there is perceived pressure to ignore or even break safety rules.
Q3. What is the impact of the three dimensions of safety climate on employees?
More specifically for organizations the three-way interaction found between the three safety dimensions demonstrate that when employees experience tension between their production deadlines and safety procedures, they are less likely to engage in risk behavior when managerial commitment to safety is perceived to be high.
Q4. How did the authors test the fit of their proposed model?
In addition to affirming the fit of their proposed four-factor model, the authors also tested alternative models by combining original factors to test discriminant validity (see Campbell and Fiske, 1959).
Q5. What is the main issue that needs to be addressed?
Another issue that needs to be addressed is the collection of data from the same respondents using selfreport measures, as the mono-method approach is believed to distort (typically inflate) correlations among the key variables (e.g. Lance and Vandenberg, 2009; Lance et al., 2010).
Q6. What is the effect of the three-way interaction on employees’ risk behavior?
As managers have a direct bearing on the jobs andallocated rewards of employees (Morrow et al., 2010), an employees’ likelihood to engage in risk behavior is reduced when their manager is highly committed to safety despite a high demand for workplace productivity.
Q7. What is the effect of pressure on safety?
This tension can have a direct effect on accident risk as employees who perceive that they are under pressure to increase production may deviate from safety rules that impede their progress or perform tasks with less care, thereby increasing the likelihood of accidents (Clarke and Cooper, 2004).
Q8. What is the significance of the study?
their study has identified boundary conditions under which the impact of managerial commitment to safety on employee risk behavior is enhanced or attenuated which in turn can inform managers about the situations inwhich their actions and behaviors are particularly influential for reducing employee risk behavior and accidents on site.
Q9. What are the main findings of this study?
In sum their findings demonstrate the direct and interactive effects of safety climate dimensions on risk behavior which (a) broaden their understanding of safety climate as a multi-dimensional construct and (b) highlight the importance of examining higherorder interactions between dimensions of safety climate in predicting (un)safe employee behavior.
Q10. What are the main reasons why the effect was small?
Although this effect accounted for only 1.2% of the variance in employees’ risk behavior, the authors feel that it is meaningful for the following reasons.
Q11. What is the role of managers in predicting safety?
As employees look to managerial behavior in situations of productivity-safety tensions, managers should demonstrate their commitment to safety through both communications and actions (i.e. regularly talk about safety, investment of resources in creating safe work environment, consideration in job design decisions, rewarding safe behavior etc.).
Q12. How do you disentangle the effects of senior management and direct supervisors?
In line with O’Dea and Flin (2001) the authors therefore encourage researchers to disentangle the differential effects of senior management and direct supervisors and their relative impact on safety, possibly employing a multilevel model of climate (see Zohar and Luria, 2005) and collecting data also from supervisors and top management.