Journal of Safety Research

Journal of Safety Research

Volume 72, February 2020, Pages 29-40
Journal of Safety Research

The mediating role of psychological capital between perceived management commitment and safety behavior

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsr.2019.12.004Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Perceived management commitment predicts miners’ safety behavior.

  • Perceived management commitment enhances miners’ psychological capital.

  • Psychological capital is positively related to safety compliance and participation.

  • Psychological capital explains the management commitment–safety behavior link.

Abstract

Introduction: Among attempts that address high incidences of fatalities and injuries in coal mines, increasing attention has been paid to management commitment to complement the traditional focus on technological advances in safety management. However, more research is needed to explain the influence of perceived management commitment, with extant research drawing commonly on Griffin and Neal (2000) to focus on safety knowledge, skills, and motivation. This study draws on social cognitive theory (Bandura, 1986) to investigate psychological capital as a link between thought process and safety behavior. Method: This study uses survey data from 400 frontline workers in China’s coal mines to test hypotheses. Result: Results suggest that perceived management commitment to safety correlates positively with workers’ safety compliance and participation, and four constituents of psychological capital—self-efficacy, hope, optimism, and resilience—explain the influence of perceived management commitment on safety compliance and participation. Practical Applications: Findings offer both researchers and practitioners an explanation of how perceived management commitment influences safety behaviors, and clarify the roles psychological capital constituents play in explaining the influence of perceived management commitment on safety compliance and safety participation.

Introduction

Mining plays a pivotal role in the global economy, with contributions especially prominent in developing and transitional economies through investment, exportation, taxes, and employment (International Council on Mining & Metals, 2015). It is also one of the most hazardous industries, with high incidences of fatalities and injuries (Parker et al., 2017, World Bank & International Finance Corporation, 2002). Attempts to improve miners’ safety have generated continued technological advances to control, detect, and eliminate hazards (Groves, Kecojevic, & Komlienovic, 2007), but the numbers, frequencies, and severities of mining accidents remain high (Liu, Wen, Xu, & Wang, 2015), suggesting a need to extend safety management beyond a technological focus.

From 2010 to 2017, China’s coal mines reported an average of 590 accidents and 1,195 deaths per year, approximately 70 times more dangerous and deadlier than in the United States (State Administration of Work Safety, 2019, U.S. Energy Information Administration, 2019). This is despite improved safety facilities and measures regarding monitoring, underground personnel positioning, emergency escape and mine rescue, self-rescue through oxygen self-rescuer, water supplies, communications, and tracking systems (Jiang, 2018) in response to stricter provisions introduced during 2000 for safety regulatory system (Shi, 2009). Particularly concerning is that technical defects accounted for only 3.54% of accidents, with 35.43% due to deliberate violations of safety procedures and 55.12% to management factors (Chen, Qi, Long, & Zhang, 2012).1 Emphasis on management aspects of coal mines has since emerged to complement an initial focus on technological improvements (He & Song, 2012), with performance and compensation designed to better motivate management commitment to safety (Lu and Yang, 2011, State Council of China, 2013, SPC-SC, 2017). Increasing focus on management aspects fits into broader literature beyond the context of China, where occupational safety research has broadened over the last two decades beyond basic protection to include organizational contexts (Hofmann, Burke, & Zohar, 2017). The most common dimension is management commitment to safety as perceived by workers regarding management knowledge and attitudes toward safety problems, and their commitment to achieving adequate safety standards (O’Toole, 2002). Perceived management commitment contributes to safety climate, for example, through an organization’s occupational safety and health programs (DeJoy, Della, Vandenberg, & Wilson, 2010), and is the strongest predictor of work injuries in comparison to other factors that comprise safety climate (see Christian, Bradley, Wallace, & Burke, 2009 for a recent meta-analysis).

However, more research is needed to explain the influence of perceived management commitment (Zohar, 2010). Research commonly draws from Griffin and Neal (2000) to focus on safety knowledge, skills, and motivation, but despite insights into drivers of safety behaviors, the traditional motivational and competency approach is insufficient to identify resources that link thought processes and safety behavior (see Stajkovic & Luthans, 1998). Perceived management commitment captures workers’ interpretations of contextual cues regarding safety (Christian et al., 2009), a cognitive process that constitutes the tenet of social cognitive theory (Bandura, 1986, Bandura, 2001). Bandura (1986) theorizes that people are motivated to achieve goals by seeking feedback from and attending to situational cues. We draw on psychological capital (Luthans et al., 2008, Newman et al., 2014) to explain the influence of perceived management commitment on safety behavior. Psychological capital refers to a “positive appraisal of circumstances and probability for success based on motivated effort and perseverance” (Luthans, Youssef, & Avolio, 2007, p. 550), which is a useful resource in stressful work environments (Luthans & Youssef-Morgan, 2017). Liu et al. (2015) apply the concept to explain the relationship between perceived organizational support and Chinese coal miners’ mental health, but the study does not offer an explicit theoretical explanation of the relationship and focuses on depressive and anxious symptoms, which are not necessarily synonymous with physical safety and health.

The objective of this study is therefore to addresses this gap by investigating the relationship between perceived management commitment and safety behaviors with fresh insights into a potential underlying mechanism. The underlying mechanism that explains how or why the influence of perceived management commitment on safety behavior occurs is known as a mediator in statistical terms (c.f. Baron & Kenny, 1986). Building on social cognitive theory (Bandura, 1986), we argue that perceived management commitment associates positively with both task and contextual performance related to safety, and that psychological capital mediates the relationship. We use a fine-grained approach to assess the role of each dimension of psychological capital—self-efficacy, hope, optimism, and resilience (Luthans, Avolio, Avey, & Norman, 2007)—using survey data drawn from 400 frontline workers in China’s coal mines to test hypotheses.

This study makes three main contributions. First, it addresses the growing reality that management commitment has become increasingly important in safety management interventions in China’s coal mines, thus making it critical that researchers and practitioners clarify whether and how such commitment, as perceived by miners, predicts their safety behaviors. We therefore do not aggregate individual perceptions to the crew level (Zohar, 2010, Zohar et al., 2014); we examine management commitment at the level of individual perception, rather than using formal policies and procedures since experienced policies and procedures inform potential consequences of employee safety behaviors (Zohar et al, 2014). Second, this study enriches understandings of how a distal factor influences safety behaviors. Since investigation of psychological capital extends the literature with a traditional focus on motivation and competence, identifying mediators (i.e., psychological capital here) enables researchers to address more accurate explanations of mechanisms that make the relationship possible (Eid et al., 2012, Zohar, 2010). Third, this study has practical implications for promoting safety behaviors with greater understanding of how perceived management commitment influences such behaviors.

Section snippets

Perceived management commitment: A social cognitive theoretical view

The traditional approach to workplace safety largely conceptualizes injuries as arising from existing risks, paying limited attention to systematic hazards. This approach is insufficient to deal with workplace safety that is an emerging property of the broader socio-technical environment (Carayon et al., 2015). In contrast, a sociotechnical systems approach acknowledges the synergistic combination of technological (e.g., equipment, machines, and tools) and social (e.g., individuals and teams)

Data collection

We collected data (February to March 2017) from frontline workers in Chinese large-scale, coal-mining enterprises located in the Ningxia Autonomous Region and Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, which are two of the top 10 coal-producing provinces in China (SACMS, 2016). We selected 30 enterprises randomly in these regions and obtained approval from senior leaders who are alumni of the MBA programs in China’s top mining university. After obtaining permission to collect the data, the first author

Participant characteristics and distributions of study variables

Prior to testing the hypotheses, we conducted several analyses to assess the sample. As shown in Table 1, ANOVA analysis showed that participants did not differ significantly regarding key study variables based on job type, age, and education. Only safety compliance differed across marriage status. Since participants worked across 30 mines, we further examined the level of dependency on mine membership. Specifically, we estimated ICC(1), which indicates the proportion of total variance

Theoretical contributions

To address high fatality and injury rates in comparison to mining in other countries, China’s coal mines have increased emphasis on management commitment to safety. However, workers have a range of options when engaging in safety behaviors, and their choices are influenced by available options, the way they interpret these options, and contexts that affect the saliency of selecting an option (Bandura, 2012). This study thus addresses an emerging organizational phenomenon that has both

Acknowledgements

This research is partly supported by The National Natural Science Foundation Projects of China (Grant No. 71904188); The State Key Program of National Social Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 19AGL030); The Humanities and Social Sciences Research Funds of the Chinese Education Ministry (Grant No. 17YJA630104 and 19YJC630203); The Social science Research Funds of Jiangsu province of China (Grant No. 19GLB014); Educational Scientific Planning Project of Jiangsu Province (Grant No.

Xinfeng Ye is an assistant professor of Electronic Commerce in the China University of Mining and Technology. Her current research interests include safety management, and organizational behaviour. She received her Ph.D. from China University of Mining and Technology in 2014. Her research has appeared in scholarly journals including Soft Science, Statistics and Information Forum, and Technique economics and Management Research. She has already authored one book.

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    Xinfeng Ye is an assistant professor of Electronic Commerce in the China University of Mining and Technology. Her current research interests include safety management, and organizational behaviour. She received her Ph.D. from China University of Mining and Technology in 2014. Her research has appeared in scholarly journals including Soft Science, Statistics and Information Forum, and Technique economics and Management Research. She has already authored one book.

    Shuang Ren is an associate professor at Deakin Business School. She completed her PhD (2010–2013) at the University of Melbourne, with her thesis awarded the Williams Prize for Excellence in the Research Thesis. Her research areas include Chinese management, leadership and leader development, and environmental management. She is the recipient of Academy of Management OB Stream Best Paper with Practical Implications Award 2019. She has so far published 2 authored research books (with Routledge) and 15 scholarly journal articles including, for instance, MIT Sloan Management Review, Asia Pacific Journal of Management, Journal of Vocational Behavior, Personnel Review, Studies in Higher Education, and International Journal of Human Resource Management.

    Xinchun Li is a professor of school of management in the China University of Mining and Technology. He received his Ph.D. in Management Science and Engineering from the China University of Mining and Technology. His research has appeared in scholarly journals including Safety Science, Journal of Cleaner Production, Systems Engineering, Journal of China University of Mining & Technology, Management Decision, Coal Engineering, Coal Economic Research. He has already authored three books.

    Zhining Wang is an associate professor of School of Management in the China University of Mining and Technology. His current research interests include knowledge management, intellectual capital, human resource management and organizational behavior. He received his Ph.D. from Southeast University of China in 2009. His research has appeared in scholarly journals including Journal of Business Research, Management Decision, Expert Systems with Applications, etc. He has already authored two books.

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