Journal of Applied Psychology1980, Vol. 65, No. 1, 96-102

Safety Climate in Industrial Organizations:Theoretical and Applied Implications

Dov ZoharTechnionIsrael Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel

A 40-item measure of organizational climate for safety was constructed andvalidated in a stratified sample of 20 industrial organizations in Israel. Thisclimate reflects employees' perceptions about the relative importance of safeconduct in their occupational behavior. It can vary from highly positive to aneutral level, and its average level reflects the safety climate in a given company.It was shown that there is an agreement among employees' perceptions re-garding safety climate in their company and that the level of this climate iscorrelated with safety program effectiveness as judged by safety inspectors.The two dimensions of highest importance in determining the level of thisclimate were workers' perceptions of management attitudes about safety andtheir perceptions regarding the relevance of safety in general production proc-esses. It is proposed that organizational climate, when operationalized andvalidated as demonstrated in this article, can serve as a useful tool in under-standing occupational behavior.

The purpose of this article is to describea particular type of organizational climateand to examine its implications. This climateis a climate for safety in industrial organiza-tions. Writers of organizational climate dis-tinguish between holistic climate measures,such as House and Rizzo's (1972) scale, andspecific climate measures. Examples for suchspecific climates are Litwin and Stringer's(1968) motivation climate, Schneider andBartlett's (1970) individual differences cli-mate, or Taylor's (1972) creativity climate.Obviously, then, any given organizationcreates a number of different climates, andthe term organizational climate has to besupplemented by an appropriate adjectiveindicating which type of climate it is. Tofollow Schneider's (1975) proposal, the termorganizational climate should describe anarea of research rather than a specific or-ganizational measure. It is in this spirit thatthe concept of safety climate was developed.

This study was supported by a grant from the Com-mittee for Preventive Action, Ministry of Labor, Israel.

The author wishes to thank Ezey Dar-El for his con-tinued encouragement through all phases of this work.

Requests for reprints should be sent to Dov Zohar,Faculty of Industrial and Management Engineering,Technion, Haifa, Israel.

In their review article, James and Jones(1974) distinguished between measures oforganizational climate that are based on (a)structural properties of organizations suchas size, structure, systems complexity, lead-ership style, and goal directions (e.g., Fore-hand & Gilmer, 1964; Porter & Lawler, 1965)and (b) perceptions held by employees aboutaspects of their organizational environment,summarized over individual employees (e.g.,Schneider, 1973; Sells, 1968; Tagiuri, 1968).In the present article we adopted this secondinterpretation of organizational climate.Namely, climate was viewed as a summaryof molar perceptions that employees shareabout their work environments. FollowingSchneider (1975), it is assumed that theseperceptions have a psychological utility inserving as a frame of reference for guidingappropriate and adaptive task behaviors.Based on a variety of cues present in theirwork environment, employees develop co-herent sets of perceptions and expectationsregarding behavior-outcome contingenciesand behave accordingly (Dieterly & Schnei-der, 1974; Fleishman, 1953; Litwin &Stringer, 1968). These coherent sets of or-ganizational perceptions, when shared and

Copyright 1980 by the American Psychological Association, Inc. 0021-9010/80/6501-00%$00.75

96

SAFETY CLIMATE 97

summarized for individual employees, aredefined here as organizational climates.

Determining Safety Climate DimensionsTo determine the various dimensions of

safety climate, a review of safety literaturewas undertaken. The purpose of this reviewwas to define organizational characteristicsthat differentiate between high versus lowaccident-rate companies. It was assumedthat such organizational features characterizeindividual plants and the global perceptionof these by production workers, hence, formthe safety climate of that factory.

One of the most consistent findings in thereviewed literature was that in factories hav-ing successful safety programs, there was astrong management commitment to safety.This commitment was exhibited in a varietyof ways. Cohen, Smith, and Cohen (1975),Mobley (Note 1), and Shafai-Sahrai (1971)have all found that in low-accident com-panies, top management was personally in-volved in safety activities on a routine basis,whereas such commitment was conspicu-ously absent in high-accident companies.Cleveland, Cohen, Smith, and Cohen (1978)and Shafai-Sahrai (1971) have reported thatin low-accident companies safety matterswere given high priority in company meet-ings and production scheduling, based onthe conviction that safety is an integral partof production systems and accidents are ac-tually symptoms of design faults in thatsystem.

Another expression of management com-mitment found to discriminate betweencompanies was the rank and status of safetyofficers; in the better companies they hada higher status. This finding was reportedby the Accident Prevention Advisory Unitin the United Kingdom (1976), Cohen et al.(1975), Davis and Stahl (1964), and Planek,Driessen, and Vilardo (1967). A second highlyconsistent organizational characteristic dis-criminating between companies was empha-sis put on safety training. In better com-panies it was designed as an integral partof new workers' training (Cohen et al., 1975;National Safety Council, 1969; Mobley,Note 1) or as a follow-up and periodic re-training for workers and supervisors (Davis

& Stahl, 1964; Planek et al., 1967). A thirdcharacteristic was the existence of opencommunication links and frequent contactsbetween workers and management (AccidentPrevention Advisory Unit in U.K., 1976;Cohen et al., 1975). Another expression ofthis free flow of information was found tobe the carrying out of frequent safety in-spections by appropriate personnel (Davis& Stahl, 1964; Planek et al., 1967). Generalenvironmental control and good housekeep-ing was the fourth characteristic appearingconsistently. Orderly plant operations, con-trolled environmental conditions, and highusage of safety devices comprised this or-ganizational characteristic in low-accidentcompanies (Shafai-Sahrai, 1971; Smith,Cohen, Cohen, & Cleveland, 1975).

A fifth characteristic was a stable workforce with less turnover and older workers(Cleveland et al., 1978; Cohen et al., 1975;Davis & Stahl, 1964). Although not specifi-cally studied, this factor probably reflectedbetter industrial relations and elaboratepersonnel development practices in thesefactories. Finally, successful companieshad distinctive ways of promoting safety.These included guidance and counseling,rather than enforcement and admonition. Inaddition, it included individual praise orrecognition for safe performance and enlist-ing workers' families in safety promotions(Cleveland et al., 1978; Davis & Stahl, 1964;National Safety Council, 1969).

When all these organizational charac-teristics are integrated, it is possible to forma coherent organizational pattern of a highlysafe company: Management is actively in-volved in safety management and creates ageneral administrative control climate (Gri-maldi, 1970) in which work is to be performed.This climate results in increased perform-ance reliability of workers, good housekeep-ing, and high design and maintenance stan-dards for work environments. There arewell-developed personnel-selection trainingand development programs in which safeconduct is an integral part. Communicationlinks between workers and management arekept open, enabling a flow of informationregarding production as well as safety mat-ters. Finally, general management philosophyis not strictly production oriented but also

98 DOV ZOHAR

people oriented, as evidenced by varioussupportive policies described above. All theorganizational characteristics describedabove were corroborated in a comprehen-sive review article published by Cohen(1977). (Although his article was publishedafter the present study was completed, itwas used in preparing this article.)

Based on the reviewed literature, it wasdecided that the safety climate questionnairewould include the following dimensions: (a)perceived management attitudes towardssafety, (b) perceived effects of safe conducton promotion, (c) perceived effects of safeconduct on social status, (d) perceived or-ganizational status of safety officer, (e) per-ceived importance and effectiveness ofsafety training, (f) perceived risk level atwork place, and (g) perceived effectivenessof enforcement versus guidance in promot-ing safety.

These dimensions, therefore, includedthose organizational characteristics found todiscriminate between high versus low ac-cident-rate companies.

Based on the literature of organizationalclimate and the literature of organizationalsafety practices, two hypotheses were for-mulated: (a) Workers in different companiesshare common perceptions regarding safetyin their organization. The sum of these per-ceptions is the safety climate in each or-ganization, (b) Safety climate can vary froma less favorable to a more favorable one.Its level in each company is expected tobe correlated with that company's safetyrecord.

MethodQuestionnaire Development

Based on the industrial safety literature describedabove, seven organizational dimensions were includedin the initial version of the safety climate questionnaire.Each of these climate dimensions was represented byseven items that were short statements with 5-pointscales for evaluating subjects' agreement with them.All items were phrased positively so that full agreementresulted in a higher score in this dimension. This pro-cedure resulted in a questionnaire of 49 items. Thequestionnaire was then given to a pilot sample of 120production workers in four factories. Workers wereinterviewed by a team of three interviewers who readeach item aloud and recorded subjects' agreement toit on the 5-point scale. These data were then factoranalyzed using a principal-components factor analysiswith varimax rotation.

This procedure resulted in eight factors that largelyoverlapped the original ones, thus confirming the valid-ity of the theoretical considerations for developingthese questionnaire items. Nine items found to be un-related to any specific factor were pulled out, resultingin a 40-item questionnaire. Items assigned to each fac-tor had a loading greater than .49 on that factor. Table 1lists these factors with their respective eigenvalues andthe number of questionnaire items representing them.It should be noted that Factor 8 was retained, despitethe fact that its eigenvalue was less than 1, which isthe lowest recommended value for factor retention(Guttman, 1954). This was done because in a dis-criminant analysis that will be referred to below (Table4), it proved to be of a high discriminant value.

Questionnaire AdministrationTwenty factories were selected for questionnaire ad-

ministration. Factory selection was done in a quasi-random manner. Using a national listing of large in-dustrial organizations (i.e., those having more than 500workers), 5 factories were randomly chosen from eachof four production categories: metal fabrication, foodprocessing, chemical industry, and textile industry. Out

Table 1Principal-Components Factor Analysis of the Safety Climate Questionnaire

Factor

Perceived importance of safety training programsPerceived management attitudes toward safetyPerceived effects of safe conduct on promotionPerceived level of risk at work placePerceived effects of required work pace on safetyPerceived status of safety officerPerceived effects of safe conduct on social statusPerceived status of safety committee

Eigenvalue

9.844.632.532.341.661.171.07.84

%ofvariance

40.919.310.69.76.94.84.43.4

No. ofquestionnaire

items

69753523

SAFETY CLIMATE 99

of the 20 selected factories, 4 declined to cooperateand were, therefore, substituted by others selected inthe same manner. All factories had a worker popula-tion of 500-1,000 workers and exhibited a wide rangeof technologies and safety records. Questionnaire ad-ministration was limited to production workers only,and in each plant a stratified random sample of 20 work-ers was selected. Sample stratification was based on therelative size of the various production departments inthe factory, resulting in a random sample in which thevarious departments were proportionally represented.Workers were interviewed by one member of the three-member interviewing team. During the interview, ques-tionnaire items were read aloud and interpreted ifnecessary. Workers' responses were then recorded ona 5-point scale for each item.

Questionnaire InterpretationTo obtain safety climate scores, responses for each

item in the questionnaire were given values from 1 to 5.The value 5 was given for high agreement with a state-ment, and a value of 1 was given for disagreementwith a statement. Each questionnaire could thus beassigned a single score indicating the safety climatelevel for that individual worker. This score was thesum of values for all items in the questionnaire. Thesafety climate level for a given factory was determinedby the average score of all 20 workers interviewed inthat plant. This procedure of representing the climateby a single score was based on theoretical considera-tions whereby all climate dimensions described condi-tions and procedures affecting safety programs' effec-tiveness. Since these wer,e considered additive in nature,a high score would indicate more favorable conditionsand procedures.

ResultsTo test the hypothesis stating that work-

ers' perceptions of their work place safetywere relatively homogeneous, the varianceof safety climate scores within factories wascompared with the variance between fac-tories using a one-way analysis of variance.The resulting F ratio was highly significant,F(19, 380) = 52.4,p < .001, hence support-ing the notion of a definable safety climatein industrial organizations.

Using a multiple-range test (Nie, Hull,Jenkins, Steinbrenner, & Bent, 1975, pp.427-428), the 20 plants were divided intofour groups based on differences betweentheir respective group mean climate scores.Each group included all factory pairs havingscores that differed by a range smaller thanthe shortest significant range for the .05 levelof significance. Table 2 lists group meansand respective production categories of

Table 2Multiple-Range Test of Factories Based onRespective Safety Climate Scores

Production categoriesM n of

Group score plants Chem Met Text Food

1234

186.6153.3141.1120.8

5447

41

1121

112

1I4

Note. Chem = chemical, Met = metal, Text = textile.

plants in each group. One evident charac-teristic of this table is that chemical plantshave the highest safety climate scores,whereas food processing plants have thelowest scores. Metal processing and textilefactories fall in between. These data couldbe expected based on the technologies andrisk levels involved. Chemical plants havethe highest risks in their production proc-esses, followed by metal fabrication andtextile factories. It is interesting, therefore,although expected based on our second hy-pothesis, that the resulting safety programpractices were reflected in the safety climatelevels of these companies.

An attempt to test the second hypothesisdirectly by correlating safety climate scoreswith standard safety measures such as ac-cident-frequency rate and accident-severityrate was terminated due to the apparent lackof reliability of these measures. This lack ofreliability resulted from the fact that thesemeasures were based on reports used forworkers' compensation purposes. Becauseof different insurance policies and a systemof penalties, some factories had highly in-flated figures, whereas others had a bias inthe opposite direction. As an alternative,therefore, four experienced safety inspectorsworking at Israel's Institute of Safety andHygiene were asked to rank order the se-lected factories according to safety practicesand accident-prevention programs. Rankingwas done separately in each productioncategory, since judges otherwise had greatdifficulty in comparing various factories.The textile factories and three others werenot rank ordered because of judges' insuf-ficient familiarity with their functioning.

100 DOV ZOHAR

Table 3Ranking of Factories Within Each Production Category

Metal

Judge

Rank

12345

A

abcde

B

abcde

C

abcde

D

abcde

score

156.3116.2124.4115.4110.4

A

fghi

Chemical

Judge

B

fghi

C

fghi

D

fgh:

score

156.9158.8155.3148.1

Food

Judge

A B C

j J 1k k k1 1 J

D

jk1

score

135.8103.2108.5

Note. When different factories share the same rank, the climate score is the one given to the modal factoryin that rank. Factories are represented by lowercase letters.

Due to their geographical dispersion, it wasimpossible to get the inspectors to visit thesefactories, and they had to be omitted. Re-sults of this procedure are given in Table 3.

The agreement between judges' rankingand respective safety climate scores of fac-tories was tested using Spearman rank cor-relation coefficients in each productioncategory. These were rs = .90 (metal), rs= .80 (chemical), and rs = .50 (food). Thesecorrelations are based on small ns rangingbetween three and five, hence they shouldbe interpreted cautiously. Inspection ofTable 3 indicates that all disagreementsbetween judges' ranking and safety-climateranks resulted from an interchange in a single

Table 4Stepwise Discriminant AnalysisSafety Climate Questionnaire

of the

Climate dimension

Perceived importance ofsafety training

Perceived effects of requiredwork pace on safety

Perceived status of safetycommittee

Perceived status of safetyofficer

Perceived effects of safeconduct on promotion

Perceived level of risk atwork place

Perceived managementattitudes toward safety

Perceived effect of safeconduct on social status

Ftoenter orremove

141.12

81.44

58.92

48.81

16.85

7.96

6.74

1.88

Wilks'lambda

.12

.02

.006

.002

.0009

.0006

.0005

.0004

pair of ranks. When fewer factories wereranked, there was a stronger effect of low-ering the resulting correlation coefficient.This relatively high agreement betweenjudges' ranking and safety-climate scorestherefore supported the second hypothesisand the validity of the safety climate ques-tionnaire. Agreement among judges wasalso high, as can be seen in Table 3. Inthe metal category there was completeagreement between judges, whereas in thechemical and food categories, disagreementsresulted from interchanges between singlepairs of factories, resulting in high overallagreement.

Finally, a stepwise discriminant analysiswas used to find the smallest number of cli-mate dimensions that are sufficient to dis-criminate between different factories basedon their safety climate levels. Results ofthis analysis are given in Table 4. Based onWilks' lambda criterion (Nie et al., 1975),climate dimensions accounted for most ofthe separation between factories. These di-mensions, listed in decreasing discriminantpower, are (a) perceived importance of safetytraining programs, (b) perceived effects ofrequired work pace on safety, (c) perceivedstatus of safety committee, and (d) perceivedstatus of safety officer.

The data in Table 4 can be interpretedas indicating that two climate dimensionsare most influential in determining safetyclimate levels. The first dimension is theperceived relevance of safety to job behavior.This relevance is reflected by regardingsafety training as an important prerequisitefor successful performance and by viewing

SAFETY CLIMATE 101

higher work pace as potentially hazardous.The second climate dimension is the per-ceived management attitude toward safety,which can be readily exhibited in workers'eyes by the organizational status of boththe safety officer and safety committee. Thestatus of the safety committee can be as-sessed by the level of those managers whoactively participate in it and by the actualimplementation of its decisions, whereas thestatus of the safety officer can be assessedby executive authority relegated to him (e.g.,authority to remove workers from produc-tion hall or to stop production processeswhen safety regulations are not followed).

To summarize, then, the data in this studysupported both hypotheses, namely: (a)Safety climate can be regarded as a char-acteristic of industrial organizations, and(b) safety climate is related to the generalsafety level in these organizations.

DiscussionOrganizational safety climate, as defined

in this article, has both theoretical and ap-plied significance. The main implication isthat management commitment to safety,with its multitude of expressions, is a majorfactor affecting the success of safety pro-grams in industry. Such expressions mightbe the establishment of job-training pro-grams, relegation of executive authority tosafety officials, participation of high-levelmanagers in safety committees, and takingsafety into consideration in job design, in-cluding required work pace. Often, manage-ment views safety as a technical and inde-pendent aspect of the production process,detached from other management operations.Yet, not willing to ignore its responsibilityin this regard (and complying with govern-ment regulations), management assigns allresponsibility to specified safety personnelwithout relegating to them any executivepower. The view proposed by this authoras well as others (Cohen, 1977; Grimaldi,1970) is quite to the contrary. Safety shouldbe regarded as an integral part of the pro-duction system closely related to the overalldegree of control management has over pro-duction processes (Grimaldi, 1970). Hence,it should not be detached from general man-agement responsibilities such as environ-

mental control, maintenance and house-keeping, worker selection and training,information flow, and so forth. Indeed, ac-cident analyses in most companies revealthese relationships and the literature re-viewed points in this direction.

The concept of safety climate implies thatproduction workers indeed have a unifiedset of cognitions regarding the safety aspectsof their organization. As proposed bySchneider (1975), such perceptions and be-havior-outcome expectations can guide anddirect job behaviors accordingly. Further-more, these cognitions are largely relatedto perceptions of management attitudesabout safety and its relevance to generalproduction processes. It can therefore beconcluded that a genuine change in manage-ment attitudes and increased commitmentare prerequisites for any successful attemptat improving the safety level in industrialorganizations. Attempting to improve safetylevels, as we often see, with new safety reg-ulations, poster campaigns, and depart-mental safety contests without first securingsincere management commitment might bemissing the forest for the trees. This is thebasic applied implication of the concept ofsafety climate in industrial organizations.

Finally, the apparent difficulties the safetyinspectors had in comparing factories fromdifferent production categories points towardthe potential use of safety-climate scoresas a common denominator for comparingdifferent factories. A major source of dif-ficulty has been the different technologiesand risk levels involved in the various fac-tories. Using a measure such as the one pro-posed here, which is independent of thesefactors, can therefore enable such com-parisons when studying industrial safetyprograms.

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Received January 8, 1979