Leadership and Work pressure as predictors of Health and Safety (H&S) Behaviour in the South African Construction Industry

Headnote

Abstract

The investigation of health and safety (H&S) climate has received a lot of research attention in the field of occupational health and safety (OHS). The importance of two H&S dimensions that contribute to the H&S climate were studied. The effect of leadership, top management commitment to health and safety (H&S) and supervisor H&S leadership, and work pressure were examined as predictors of H&S behaviour amongst construction workers in South Africa. A descriptive design was used and a cross-sectional self-administered survey questionnaire was completed by 282 construction workers. The scales used were found to be reliable and valid. The results indicate the importance of considering the interaction between the two aspects of leadership in explaining H&S behaviour.

Keywords: safety behaviour; construction; leadership; work pressure

1 Introduction

The high rate of accidents and fatalities in the construction industry is well established knowledge (Takala, 2002; Torner and Pousette, 2009). The past three decades have seen a steady increase in efforts to explain and predict H&S behaviour at work, especially in the economically hazardous construction industry. Recent studies have investigated factors such as leadership and contextual factors such as work pressure in an effort to establish factors that can enable organisations to improve H&S behaviour and thereby reduce accidents in the workplace (Snyder et al., 2008). This paper examines the relationship between top management commitment to H&S, supervisor H&S leadership, work pressures and H&S behaviour amongst South African construction workers. These three predictor variables were selected because they are frequently cited in the literature as important predictors of H&S behaviour (Gadd and Collins, 2000; Zohar, 2002).

1.1 Top management commitment

Top management commitment to H&S is enacted through policies, procedures and practices that top managers champion (Cooper, 2000), and is manifested through the allocation of resources to H&S (Gadd & Collins, 2002). The extent to which management is perceived to set H&S as a priority in the organisation and the H&S behaviour of management employees establishes the foundation for an effective H&S climate (Neal and Griffin, 2006). Top management help create and sustain the H&S climate of an organisation that can promote proactive, principled and innovative H&S practices. Mearns et al (2001) showed that employee perceptions of top management commitment to H&S were positively linked to...