Abstract :
[en] Since Hofmann, Jacobs and Landy (1995) emphasized the need to consider the influences of socio-organizational factors on safety, several studies have invoked psychological processes in order to interpret the relationships they identified between such organizational factors and safety outcomes. However, studies measuring effectively such psychological processes are quite scarce. Four distinct psychological processes have been identified as fundamental to predict safety behaviors: cognitive, motivational, instrumental and social exchange processes. Hansez and Chmiel (2010) have applied the job demands resources model (Bakker & Demerouti, 2007) to the safety domain, identifying 3 different safety specific (instrumental) and non-safety specific (cognitive and motivational) psychological processes explaining safety violations.
Our main aim is to integrate the four psychological processes, but also in-role and extra-role safety behaviors to the same model. More specifically, we aim at replicating Hansez and Chmiel’s (2010) results on a different sample and integrating safety-specific social process to the model.
1,922 workers (71% response rate) returned a questionnaire including validated scales measuring job demands (work overload and role ambiguity), job resources (job quality, decision latitude and work support), job strain, job engagement, perceived management commitment to safety, routine and situational violations, safety participation and safety citizenship role definitions (SCRDs).
Data were analyzed using structural equation modelling and bootstrapping. Results showed that, as expected, our model followed the same patterns as Hansez and Chmiel’s (2010) model, confirming the importance of cognitive-energetical, motivational and instrumental
processes in the prediction of safety violations. Moreover, perceiving management as committed to safety leads workers to define discretionary safety behaviours as part of the job, which is linked to corresponding discretionary behaviours. Participating in such discretionary activities, in turn, leads to (1) lower situational violations, but also to (2) lower routine violations. These results confirm the importance of safety-specific social exchange processes in the prediction of safety violations.
Thus, it appears that different processes of reaction to working conditions can impact employee’ safety behaviors. On the one hand, situational violations are impacted by motivational process, as job resources encourage employees to be stimulated by their job, by instrumental process, as perceiving management as committed to safety is directly associated with lower situational violations, and by social process stemming from job resources (i.e. job resources allow employees to perceive their management as committed to safety, and they reciprocate this interest by defining safety as a part of their role, what encourage them to participate to discretionary safety activities). On the other hand, routine violations are impacted by the same social exchange (although to a lesser extent) and motivational processes, but also by cognitive process, as demanding working conditions may provoke job strain, associated with more “corner-cutting”.
A practical implication for companies who want to reduce safety violations is to consider safety-specific and non-safety specific processes together. That is, they can try to improve working conditions considered as job resources, but need to keep in mind that these resources determine more complex safety-specific social exchange processes, through the crucial influence of management.
