Impact of the Supervisor on Worker Safety Behavior in Construction Projects

As a major organizational antecedent of worker safety behavior (WSB), management behavior is drawing more and more academic attention because it tends to be the root cause of occupational safety accidents. The current behavior-based safety (BBS) practices in construction do not sufficiently take management behavior into consideration, which leads to superficial and nonpersistent intervention impacts on unsafe behavior. In academia, the relationship between management behavior and employees’ individual behavior in construction has not been clearly studied and precisely depicted. This paper is aimed at discovering those management behaviors which can significantly impact worker safety behavior in construction projects and depict the exact impacting paths. Supervisors were on the focus because they interact with workers most profoundly and frequently among all levels of the management. Two dimensions of supervisory behavior were identified, namely (1) training and preventive action, and (2) reactive and supportive action. Group-level safety climate was used as the mediator along the influencing paths. A 3-month strictly controlled questionnaire survey was undertaken in the Hong Kong construction industry to collect empirical data. Results obtained from confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling showed that both direct and indirect impacts of supervisory behavior on worker safety behavior exist. Reactive and supportive action has a direct impact on worker safety behavior, but no impact on safety climate. Training and preventive action can influence different aspects of safety climate of the construction sites (like supervisory environment and workers’ involvement), and thus improve safety conditions in a more profound (and comprehensive) manner than reactive and supportive action. This paper establishes the detailed empirical links among operational management behavior, group-level safety climate, and worker safety behavior in the construction settings, which can give significant insights into the development of safety management theories and practices. This can further help practitioners design enhanced BBS intervention approaches which can have a more sustainable and persistent impact on worker safety behavior. Specific recommendations and suggestions are provided for future BBS practices in construction.