Predicting safe employee behavior in the steel industry: Development and test of a sociotechnical model

Industrial safety is an important issue for operations managers - it has im plications for cost, delivery, quality, and social responsibility. Minor ac cidents can interfere with production in a variety of ways, and a serious a ccident can shut down an entire operation. In this context, questions about the causes of workplace accidents are highly relevant. There is a popular notion that employees' unsafe acts are the primary causes of workplace acci dents, but a number of authors suggest a perspective that highlights influe nces from operating and social systems. The study described herein addresse s this subject by assessing steelworkers' responses to a survey about socia l, technical, and personal factors related to safe work behaviors. Results provide evidence that a chain reaction of technical and social constructs o perate through employees to influence safe behaviors. These results demonst rate that safety hazards, safety culture, and production pressures can infl uence safety efficacy and cavalier attitudes, on a path leading to safe or unsafe work behaviors. Based on these results, we conclude with prescriptio ns for operations managers and others who play roles in the causal sequence . (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.