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The purpose of this paper is to test an initial model of safety climate for firefighting. Relationships between safety climate, safety behaviors and firefighter injuries were examined.

Data were collected from 398 professional firefighters in the southeastern USA. Structural equation modeling, using a zero-inflated Poisson regression method, was used to complete the analyses.

Safety climate, as a higher order factor, was comprised of four factors including management commitment to safety, supervisor support for safety, safety programs/policies and safety communication. Both safety compliance behaviors and safety participation behaviors were significantly, positively associated with safety climate. Both behaviors were deemed protective and were associated with reductions in injury. Safety climate relations to injury were interesting, but somewhat ambiguous. Safety climate significantly predicted membership in the “always zero” injury group. For those not in the “always zero” group, the relationship between safety climate and injury was positive, which was not completely surprising as direct relationships between safety climate and injury have been insignificant and opposite to predictions in studies using retrospective data and may be attributed to reverse causation.

This novel study illustrates the importance of both organizational and work unit factors in helping shape safety climate perceptions among firefighters. The results also support the safety climate – behavior – injury model and show that a positive safety climate encourages safer behaviors among firefighters. Lastly, the findings confirm that both safety compliance behaviors and safety participation behaviors are important to reducing individual firefighter injury experience.

With occupational stress representing just one example, different streams of research have emerged over the past several decades to explain the antecedents to and consequences of possessing a “healthy” workforce. A positive characteristic of these seemingly independent efforts is that a triangulation of results has emerged supporting the importance of attending to the health and well being of the individual worker. A drawback to these efforts, though, is that while utilizing at times the identical constructs, these constructs are configured differently depending on the conceptual premises of the focal framework. In an attempt to bring the different perspectives together, a model of the “healthy work organization” is presented and tested in this chapter. The model recognizes that there are higher-order constructs characterizing many of the component constructs of the previous efforts, and it is at this level that much of the unification of those efforts is achieved. Utilizing structural equation modeling procedures, the healthy work organization model was supported.

The purpose of this study is to examine when perceived organizational support (POS) may be more likely to play a mediator versus moderator role in stressor and strain relationships by considering POS relative to challenge and hindrance stressors, cognitive/emotional and physical strains.

This cross‐sectional survey research was conducted in two samples (n=720, 829) of employees working for a large retail organization in the USA. Hypotheses were tested using structural equation modeling.

As hypothesized, results indicate POS mediates relationships between hindrance stressors and cognitive/emotional strains, but does not mediate relationships between challenge stressors and physical strains. POS does not moderate any of the relationships examined.

This paper is one of few studies to examine challenge and hindrance stressors and to examine POS relative to physical strains.

The purpose of this study was to investigate occupational and non-occupational mortality among Mexican immigrants in the South Eastern United States. The construction industry has the highest burden of occupational fatalities in the USA of all industries, and foreign-born Hispanic workers are disproportionately affected.

Data were obtained from 3,093 death certificates maintained by the Consulate General of Mexico in Atlanta, Georgia. Standardized mortality ratios (SMR) were used to compare occupational-related deaths among construction industry occupations, and logistic regression models were used to examine the relationship between manners of death not related to occupation and employment in the construction industry.

The proportion of Mexican immigrants who died from occupational injuries is higher among all construction workers (SMR = 1.31), roofers (SMR = 2.32) and carpenters (SMR = 2.25) than other workers. Among the population in this analysis suicide [adjusted odds ratio (aOR) = 0.63] and death from natural causes (aOR = 0.70) were inversely related to work in the construction industry.

Interventions to reduce occupational fatalities among Mexican migrant construction workers should target roofers and carpenters. Future research should further investigate the industry’s association with suicide and natural death.

This is one of the first analyzes that investigated associations between construction industry employment and non-occupational fatalities among immigrants. The analysis provides evidence that a large portion of the Mexican immigrant population is used in the construction industry (38%) and face elevated risks for occupational fatalities and the results of this investigation should encourage greater surveillance of occupational illness and injury among foreign-born immigrants who work in construction, as well as other high-risk industries.

This study aims to use organizational identification, organizational culture and safety culture as the intervening variables between safety mission statements and safety behavior to survey and model the process of brokering knowledge from the top strategy makers to the workers on assignments. A pilot empirical research initiative was launched to determine the linkage between safety missions and safety behavior in the airline industry.

First, descriptive statistics and independent‐sample t‐tests were used to evaluate the mean, standard deviation (SD) and the relationship between the safety mission statement, organizational identification, organizational culture, safety culture and safety behavior and the respondent's years of working for the sampled airline. In addition, Pearson correlation analysis was used to test the relationships between the five factors. Finally, path analysis was used to examine the direct effects and indirect effects between individual factors.

The findings show that organizational identification and organizational culture are two important intervening variables between the safety mission statement (knowledge brokering) and safety behavior. The results of Pearson correlation analysis indicate that five factors are highly correlated with each other, especially the safety mission statement and organizational identification; organizational culture and safety culture; organizational identification and organizational culture; and safety culture and safety behavior. Besides, the safety mission statement has a negative direct effect on the pilot's safety behavior.

To understand the process of using the safety mission statement to change safety behavior can significantly increase the benefits of brokering knowledge. Furthermore, this study has provided an overview of the flight crews' perceptions on how safety is managed in the aviation industry. Based on the findings, it is concluded that organizations in the various sectors of the airline could do better in managing safety, and in brokering the safety knowledge in the industry. At another level, this study provides an opportunity to explore the validity of causal relationships among different areas.

This chapter provides an updated review of research examining the relationship between occupational stressors and job performance. We begin by presenting an eight-category taxonomy of workplace stressors and we then review theories that explain the relationships between workplace stressors and job performance. The subsequent literature review is divided into two sections. In the first section, we present a summary of Jex's (1998) review of research on the job stress–job performance relationship. In the second section, we provide an updated review of the literature, which includes studies that have been published since 1998. In this review, we evaluate how well the contemporary research has dealt with weaknesses and limitations previously identified in the literature, we identify and evaluate current trends, and we offer recommendations and directions for future research.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and gain a deeper understanding of environmental, organizational, and group conditions, and leadership-related issues in particular, in severely stressful situations involving a moral stressor faced by military and police officers.

A combined deductive and inductive approach was used, and in total 23 military and police officers, all having experience of morally difficult decisions during severely stressful conditions, were interviewed.

A hierarchical conceptual framework of contextual characteristics was developed. The environmental, organizational, leadership-related, and group aspects identified in this study on morally stressful situations resemble findings from general research on work and stress. However, a stronger emphasis was put on leaders’ handling of values and his or her ability to confront senior management when needed.

The results suggest that well-documented methods aimed at the prevention of, and recovery from, work-related stress, also can be used in the case of extreme situations involving moral stressors.

The interplay between leadership and extreme situations involving moral stressors is, to the best of the knowledge, understudied.

Focusing on ethical issues when making organizational decisions should encourage a variety of positive outcomes for companies and their employees. The purpose of this paper is to determine the degree to which data-based ethical decision making, lateral relations and organizational commitment are interrelated in organizations.

Data were collected from business professionals employed at multiple locations of a financial services firm operating in the USA. Mediation analysis (based on structural equation modeling) was used to test the proposed relationships.

Results indicated that employees’ perceptions of data-based ethical decision making were positively related to perceived lateral relations, and that perceived lateral relations were positively related to organizational commitment.

Given that information was collected using only a self-report questionnaire, common method bias could be an issue. In addition, the study’s cross-sectional design limits conclusions about causality. Another limitation involves the study’s homogenous sample, which decreases the generalizability of the findings. Finally, variable responses could have been impacted by individual frames of reference and other perceptual differences.

Results suggest that information flow enhancements should support or be consistent with horizontal information flow enhancements, and that together these factors should increase employee commitment.

Given the dearth of existing research, this interdisciplinary investigation is important because it fills gaps in the management literature. This study is also important because the results could inform decisions regarding the use of data analysis in ethical decisions and lateral forms of organizational structuring to improve work attitudes.

The use of mobile digital devices requires secure behaviour while using these devices. To influence this behaviour, one should be able to adequately measure the behaviour. The purpose of this study is to establish a model for measuring secure behaviour, and to use this model to measure the secure behaviour of individuals while using mobile digital devices such as smartphones and laptops.

Based on a wide-ranging questionnaire (N = 1000), this study investigates the degree of influence that a relatively large number of factors have on secure behaviour while using mobile digital devices. These factors include knowledge and cognitive attitude, but also affective attitude, as well as several types of bias.

This study has provided a model for measuring secure behaviour. The results of the measurements show that knowledge, bias, cognitive attitude and affective attitude all have impact on secure behaviour while using mobile digital devices. Moreover, none of these factors is of minor importance.

This study shows that it is important to also consider previously undervalued factors, such as affective attitude and various types of bias, when designing interventions to improve secure behaviour while using mobile digital devices.

Most research on secure behaviour has only looked at a small number of influencing factors, usually limited to knowledge and cognitive attitude. This study shows that one needs a more elaborate model for measuring secure behaviour, and that previously undervalued factors have a clear influence on secure behaviour.

In recent years, there were several incidents of fire in secondary schools in Malaysia. A study conducted by the Ministry of Education has found that there were outbreaks of fire in 22 primary and secondary schools and in institutions of higher learning for the year 1999 resulting in losses of RM 534,400. This study was carried out to identify fire safety conditions in residential colleges in a local Malaysian university. An audit approach as well as the use of questionnaire was adopted to collect primary data for the study. The audit results show that the overall fire safety condition was at 76 percent compliance level. The survey results showed that only predisposing factors such as knowledge, attitude and belief have a positive relationship with the fire safety behavior and lifestyle (p<0.5). The survey identified six important elements for fire safety and in ranking order they are: belief in the importance of fire safety, perception on the need for immediate response to fire incidence, knowledge in fire safety, attitude of occupants, social influence, and feedback on fire safety issues.