TY - JOUR
T1 - Supervisory interpretation of safety climate versus employee safety climate perception
T2 - Association with safety behavior and outcomes for lone workers
AU - Huang, Yueng Hsiang
AU - Robertson, Michelle M.
AU - Lee, Jin
AU - Rineer, Jenn
AU - Murphy, Lauren A.
AU - Garabet, Angela
AU - Dainoff, Marvin J.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.
PY - 2014/9
Y1 - 2014/9
N2 - Research has shown that safety climate predicts safety behavior and safety outcomes in a variety of settings. Prior studies have focused on traditional work environments in which employees and supervisors work in the same location and the mechanisms through which safety climate affects behavior are largely understood. However, the nascent research examining safety climate among lone workers suggests that safety climate may have some uniqueness in this context. Based on leadership theories and utilizing an exploratory approach, this study increases our understanding of the lone worker context by examining employee perception of safety climate and supervisory interpretation of safety climate; how similar or different they are, and how they are related to important safety outcomes. Surveys were administered to a matched sample of 1831 truck drivers and their 219 supervisors at four different trucking companies. Objective data on employee injuries were collected six months after survey administration. The results provided support for the measurement equivalence of the Trucking Safety Climate Scale at the organization level for both employee and supervisor respondents. For both organization- and group-level safety climate, employee perceptions of safety climate and supervisory interpretation of safety climate were significantly different, such that supervisors provided higher ratings for both safety climate sub-scales. Further, only employee safety climate perceptions significantly predicted self-reported safety behavior (directly) and objective injury outcomes (indirectly). This suggests that when trying to gauge and improve upon a trucking company's safety climate, we should rely on employee perspectives, rather than supervisory interpretation, of safety climate.
AB - Research has shown that safety climate predicts safety behavior and safety outcomes in a variety of settings. Prior studies have focused on traditional work environments in which employees and supervisors work in the same location and the mechanisms through which safety climate affects behavior are largely understood. However, the nascent research examining safety climate among lone workers suggests that safety climate may have some uniqueness in this context. Based on leadership theories and utilizing an exploratory approach, this study increases our understanding of the lone worker context by examining employee perception of safety climate and supervisory interpretation of safety climate; how similar or different they are, and how they are related to important safety outcomes. Surveys were administered to a matched sample of 1831 truck drivers and their 219 supervisors at four different trucking companies. Objective data on employee injuries were collected six months after survey administration. The results provided support for the measurement equivalence of the Trucking Safety Climate Scale at the organization level for both employee and supervisor respondents. For both organization- and group-level safety climate, employee perceptions of safety climate and supervisory interpretation of safety climate were significantly different, such that supervisors provided higher ratings for both safety climate sub-scales. Further, only employee safety climate perceptions significantly predicted self-reported safety behavior (directly) and objective injury outcomes (indirectly). This suggests that when trying to gauge and improve upon a trucking company's safety climate, we should rely on employee perspectives, rather than supervisory interpretation, of safety climate.
KW - Safety climate
KW - Supervisor versus employee perceptions
KW - Trucking industry
KW - Workplace accidents and injuries
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84908239410&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=84908239410&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.trf.2014.04.006
DO - 10.1016/j.trf.2014.04.006
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84908239410
SN - 1369-8478
VL - 26
SP - 348
EP - 360
JO - Transportation Research Part F: Traffic Psychology and Behaviour
JF - Transportation Research Part F: Traffic Psychology and Behaviour
IS - PB
ER -