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      Diagnosis of poor safety culture as a major shortcoming in OHSAS 18001-certified companies

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          Abstract

          The evaluation of safety performance in occupational health and safety assessment series (OHSAS) 18001-certified companies provides useful information about the quality of the management system. A certified organization should employ an adequate level of safety management and a positive safety culture to achieve a satisfactory safety performance. The present study conducted in six manufacturing companies: three OHSAS 18001-certified, and three non-certified to assess occupational health and safety (OHS) as well as OHSAS 18001 practices. The certified companies had a better OHS practices compared with the non-certified companies. The certified companies slightly differed in OHS and OHSAS 18001 practices and one of the certified companies had the highest activity rates for both practices. The results indicated that the implemented management systems have not developed and been maintained appropriately in the certified companies. The in-depth analysis of the collected evidence revealed shortcomings in safety culture improvement in the certified companies. This study highlights the importance of safety culture to continuously improve the quality of OHSAS 18001 and to properly perform OHS/OHSAS 18001 practices in the certified companies.

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          Most cited references47

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          A study of the lagged relationships among safety climate, safety motivation, safety behavior, and accidents at the individual and group levels.

          The authors measured perceptions of safety climate, motivation, and behavior at 2 time points and linked them to prior and subsequent levels of accidents over a 5-year period. A series of analyses examined the effects of top-down and bottom-up processes operating simultaneously over time. In terms of top-down effects, average levels of safety climate within groups at 1 point in time predicted subsequent changes in individual safety motivation. Individual safety motivation, in turn, was associated with subsequent changes in self-reported safety behavior. In terms of bottom-up effects, improvements in the average level of safety behavior within groups were associated with a subsequent reduction in accidents at the group level. The results contribute to an understanding of the factors influencing workplace safety and the levels and lags at which these effects operate. ((c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved).
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            Safety climate in industrial organizations: theoretical and applied implications.

            D Zohar (1980)
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              Exploratory analysis of the safety climate and safety behavior relationship.

              Safety climate refers to the degree to which employees believe true priority is given to organizational safety performance, and its measurement is thought to provide an "early warning" of potential safety system failure(s). However, researchers have struggled over the last 25 years to find empirical evidence to demonstrate actual links between safety climate and safety performance. A safety climate measure was distributed to manufacturing employees at the beginning of a behavioral safety initiative and redistributed one year later. Multiple regression analysis demonstrated that perceptions of the importance of safety training were predictive of actual levels of safety behavior. The results also demonstrate that the magnitude of change in perceptual safety climate scores will not necessarily match actual changes (r=0.56, n.s.) in employee's safety behavior. This study obtained empirical links between safety climate scores and actual safety behavior. Confirming and contradicting findings within the extant safety climate literature, the results strongly suggest that the hypothesized climate-behavior-accident path is not as clear cut as commonly assumed. A statistical link between safety climate perceptions and safety behavior will be obtained when sufficient behavioral data is collected. The study further supports the use of safety climate measures as useful diagnostic tools in ascertaining employee's perceptions of the way that safety is being operationalized.
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                Author and article information

                Journal
                Ind Health
                Ind Health
                INDHEALTH
                Industrial Health
                National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, Japan
                0019-8366
                1880-8026
                24 December 2016
                March 2017
                : 55
                : 2
                : 138-148
                Affiliations
                [1 ]Department of Occupational Health Engineering, School of Public Heath, Urmia University of Medical Sciences, Iran
                [2 ]Institute of Behavioral Sciences, University of Helsinki, Finland
                Author notes
                [*]*To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: Abolfazl.Ghahramani@ 123456helsinki.fi
                Article
                2015-0205
                10.2486/indhealth.2015-0205
                5383411
                28025422
                3e3aec6e-2d76-431f-86cd-e6e91efbd135
                ©2017 National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health

                This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives (by-nc-nd) License.

                History
                : 26 October 2015
                : 20 December 2016
                Categories
                Original Article

                safety performance,safety culture,management commitment,certification,manufacturing

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