Patrick A. Palmieri, Lori T. Peterson, Bryan J. Pesta, Michel A. Flit and David M. Saettone
Through a number of comprehensive reviews, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) has recommended that healthcare organizations develop safety cultures to align delivery system processes…
Abstract
Through a number of comprehensive reviews, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) has recommended that healthcare organizations develop safety cultures to align delivery system processes with the workforce requirements to improve patient outcomes. Until health systems can provide safer care environments, patients remain at risk for suboptimal care and adverse outcomes. Health science researchers have begun to explore how safety cultures might act as an essential system feature to improve organizational outcomes. Since safety cultures are established through modification in employee safety perspective and work behavior, human resource (HR) professionals need to contribute to this developing organizational domain. The IOM indicates individual employee behaviors cumulatively provide the primary antecedent for organizational safety and quality outcomes. Yet, many safety culture scholars indicate the concept is neither theoretically defined nor consistently applied and researched as the terms safety culture, safety climate, and safety attitude are interchangeably used to represent the same concept. As such, this paper examines the intersection of organizational culture and healthcare safety by analyzing the theoretical underpinnings of safety culture, exploring the constructs for measurement, and assessing the current state of safety culture research. Safety culture draws from the theoretical perspectives of sociology (represented by normal accident theory), organizational psychology (represented by high reliability theory), and human factors (represented by the aviation framework). By understanding not only the origins but also the empirical safety culture research and the associated intervention initiatives, healthcare professionals can design appropriate HR strategies to address the system characteristics that adversely affect patient outcomes. Increased emphasis on human resource management research is particularly important to the development of safety cultures. This paper contributes to the existing healthcare literature by providing the first comprehensive critical analysis of the theory, research, and practice that comprise contemporary safety culture science.
Rhona Flin, Paul O’Connor and Kathryn Mearns
The aviation industry recognised the significance of human error in accidents in the 1970s, and has been instrumental in the development of special training, designed to reduce…
Abstract
The aviation industry recognised the significance of human error in accidents in the 1970s, and has been instrumental in the development of special training, designed to reduce error and increase the effectiveness of flight crews. These crew resource management (CRM) programmes focus on “non‐technical skills” critical for enhanced operational performance, such as leadership, situation awareness, decision making, team work and communication. More recently CRM has been adopted by other “high reliability” team environments including anaesthesiology, air traffic control, the Merchant Navy, the nuclear power industry, aviation maintenance, and the offshore oil industry. This review paper describes the basic principles of crew resource management, then outlines recent developments in aviation and other high reliability work environments.
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Lars U. Johnson, Cody J. Bok, Tiffany Bisbey and L. A. Witt
Decision-making in human resources management is done at both the micro and macro level of organizations. Unfortunately, the decisions at each level are often executed without…
Abstract
Decision-making in human resources management is done at both the micro and macro level of organizations. Unfortunately, the decisions at each level are often executed without consideration of the other, and current theory reflects this issue. In response to a call for integration of micro- and macro-level processes by Huselid and Becker (2011), we review the extant literature on strategic human resources and high-performance work systems to provide recommendations for both research and practice. We aimed to contribute to the literature by proposing the incorporation of the situation awareness literature into the high-performance work systems framework to encourage the alignment of human resources efforts. In addition, we provide practical recommendations for integrating situation awareness and strategic decision-making. We discuss a process for the employment of situation awareness in organizations that might not only streamline human resources management but also result in more effective decisions. Additional considerations include implications for teams, boundary conditions (e.g., individual differences), and measurement.
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R. Flin, Z. Pender, L. Wujec, V. Grant and E. Stewart
The aim of this study is to identify the dimensions used by police officers in Scotland to discriminate and categorise operational situations.
Abstract
Purpose
The aim of this study is to identify the dimensions used by police officers in Scotland to discriminate and categorise operational situations.
Design/methodology/approach
This article was based on two studies: study 1 was a card‐sorting task: 23 officers categorised a set of 19 typical police operational situations, analysed using multi‐dimensional scaling; study 2 was a judgement task: 112 police officers rated 20 situations (19 from study1) in terms of amount of time to make a decision, risk to self, risk to others, familiarity and stress. Frequency data and correlations were calculated.
Findings
Study 1 results showed that the two main dimensions used to discriminate between situations were “familiarity” and “risk to the officer”. Study 2 found that most situations required a decision in less than three minutes. Rank and experience were related to familiarity but not to the other judgements. The situations requiring the fastest decisions were also judged to be of higher risk and more unfamiliar. Risks to self and to others were highly correlated, and higher risk situations were judged as more stressful.
Research limitations/implications
This preliminary study shows that knowledge elicitation techniques can be used to improve our understanding of police officers' knowledge and cognitive skills for operational policing.
Practical implications
Good situational judgements form the basis of effective operational decision‐making. Understanding how officers “read” situations and how this develops with expertise can provide valuable information for police training and critical incident management.
Originality/value
Police officers' cognitive skills have rarely been studied in relation to routine operational policing. This study is a first attempt to examine situational judgement skills.
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Abdul Qayoom and Bonaventura H.W. Hadikusumo
Previous research studies have testified that safety culture positively affects safety performance. However, the progression by which safety culture affects safety performance has…
Abstract
Purpose
Previous research studies have testified that safety culture positively affects safety performance. However, the progression by which safety culture affects safety performance has not yet been examined. Also, how safety culture affects the overall safety performance at different levels of the organization is yet to be explored. In order to address this issue, the purpose of this paper is to study the effect of multilevel safety culture upon safety performance over time.
Design/methodology/approach
A conceptual causal-loop diagram is constructed using the group model building approach to establish the relationship between safety culture components (e.g. psychological, behavioral and situational) and the factors associated with safety performance (e.g. risk level, safety behavior, unsafe conditions, unsafe acts and incident rate). Considering the dynamic nature and intricacy of the safety management system, the system dynamics approach has been employed to develop the model.
Findings
The results indicate that the safety culture at the tactical level (middle management) and operational level is much more effective than strategic level (top management) in ameliorating the safety performance of the organization.
Research limitations/implications
The scope of this study is limited to the effect of multilevel safety culture on safety performance. The focus is on the dynamics of personal, behavioral and situational factors of top management, middle management and workers to reinforce the safety performance of the organization. Future research can be protracted to build other models of safety.
Practical implications
First and foremost, the findings summarized in this paper can be implemented by organizations to achieve the total safety culture to upgrade safety performance.
Originality/value
This paper presents the holistic view of multilevel safety culture in an organization’s hierarchy. It shows how multilevel level safety culture in an organization interacts with the safety management system to enhance the safety performance of the organization.
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Michael J. Burke and Sloane M. Signal
While research on workplace safety spans across disciplines in medicine, public health, engineering, psychology, and business, research to date has not adopted a multilevel…
Abstract
While research on workplace safety spans across disciplines in medicine, public health, engineering, psychology, and business, research to date has not adopted a multilevel theoretical perspective that integrates theoretical issues and findings from various disciplines. In this chapter, we integrate research on workplace safety from a variety of disciplines and fields to develop a multilevel model of the processes that affect individual safety performance and safety and health outcomes. In doing so, we focus on cross-level linkages among national, organizational, and individual-level variables in relation to the exhibition of safe work behavior and occurrence of individual-level accidents, injuries, illnesses, and diseases. Our modeling of workplace safety is intended to fill a theoretical gap in our understanding of how the multitude of individual differences and situational factors interrelate across time to influence individual level safety behaviors and the consequences of these actions, and to encourage research to expand the limits of our knowledge.
Deirdre McCaughey, Jonathon R. B. Halbesleben, Grant T. Savage, Tony Simons and Gwen E. McGhan
Hospitals within the United States consistently have injury rates that are over twice the national employee injury rate. Hospital safety studies typically investigate care…
Abstract
Purpose
Hospitals within the United States consistently have injury rates that are over twice the national employee injury rate. Hospital safety studies typically investigate care providers rather than support service employees. Compounding the lack of evidence for this understudied population is the scant evidence that is available to examine the relationship of support service employees’ perceptions of safety and work-related injuries. To examine this phenomenon, the purpose of this study was to investigate support service employees’ perceptions of safety leadership and social support as well as the relationship of safety perception to levels of reported injuries.
Design/methodology/approach
A nonexperimental survey was conducted with the data collected from hospital support service employees (n=1,272) and examined: (1) relationships between safety leadership (supervisor and organization) and individual and unit safety perceptions; (2) the moderating effect of social support (supervisor and coworker) on individual and unit safety perceptions; and (3) the relationship of safety perception to reported injury rates. The survey items in this study were based on the items from the AHRQ Patient Safety Culture Survey and the U.S. National Health Care Surveys.
Findings
Safety leadership (supervisor and organization) was found to be positively related to individual safety perceptions and unit safety grade as was supervisor and coworker support. Coworker support was found to positively moderate the following relationships: supervisor safety leadership and safety perceptions, supervisor safety leadership and unit safety grade, and senior management safety leadership and safety perceptions. Positive employee safety perceptions were found to have a significant relationship with lower reported injury rates.
Value/originality
These findings suggest that safety leadership from supervisors and senior management as well as coworker support has positive implications for support service employees’ perceptions of safety, which, in turn, are negatively related to lower odds of reporting injuries.
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Amal Dabbous, Karine Aoun Barakat and May Merhej Sayegh
As artificial intelligence (AI) has become increasingly popular and accessible, most companies have recognized its far-reaching potential. However, despite numerous research…
Abstract
Purpose
As artificial intelligence (AI) has become increasingly popular and accessible, most companies have recognized its far-reaching potential. However, despite numerous research papers on organizational adoption of new technologies including AI, little is known about individual employees’ intentions to use them. Given that organizational innovations are of limited value if they are not adopted by employees, the purpose of this study is to understand the underlying factors that push employees to make use of these new technologies in the workplace.
Design/methodology/approach
This study builds on previously developed technology acceptance models to provide a new theoretical model. The model is then tested using data collected from a survey of 203 employees and analyzed through structural equation modeling.
Findings
Findings show that five factors affect employees’ intention to use AI either directly or as mediators. Organizational culture and habit exert a positive impact on employees’ intention to use AI, whereas job insecurity has a negative impact. Perceived self-image and perceived usefulness fully mediate the relation between job insecurity and intention to use. Moreover, perceived self-image and perceived usefulness partially mediate the relationship between habit and intention to use.
Originality/value
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is among the first to determine the factors that influence employees’ intention to use AI in general and more particularly chatbots within the workplace.
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Despite being the standard against which all other offshore work sites are compared, the male-dominated work culture of the Gulf of Mexico has received little attention from…
Abstract
Despite being the standard against which all other offshore work sites are compared, the male-dominated work culture of the Gulf of Mexico has received little attention from social scientists. Drawing on the literature on women and work in the United States, on women in the U.S. South, in the military, and in the oil field, and on interviews with hundreds of individuals this paper explores the roles of women in the development and maintenance of the offshore oil and gas industry in southern Louisiana.
Giovanna Pegan, James Reardon and Donata Vianelli
The purpose of this study is to seek to investigate whether and how country of origin (COO) cues – category-country image (CCI) and typicality – and importers’ domain-specific…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to seek to investigate whether and how country of origin (COO) cues – category-country image (CCI) and typicality – and importers’ domain-specific innovativeness (DSI) influence importers’ propensity to the trial new value and premium products. Moreover, it aims to understand whether and how the relationship between the COO effect and industrial purchase intentions is moderated by importers’ propensity to innovate (DSI).
Design/methodology/approach
International importers completed a quantitative online survey. Factor analysis was used to summarize the latent constructs into orthogonal scores. General linear modeling was applied to the scores to test the hypotheses.
Findings
The results indicate that importers’ propensity to trial value products is directly influenced by CCI and importers’ DSI. For premium products, typicality has a positive effect on their propensity to trial. Also, CCI and DSI have positive effects on the trial of value products, and the effect is more pronounced than for premium products. Importers’ DSI positively moderates CCI in premium product trials, while it negatively moderates typicality in value products.
Practical implications
This research provides important managerial implications for practitioners seeking to increase foreign sales, strengthening importers’ product perceived value through COO cues. Exporters should distinguish between value and premium products and, in the selection of international channel partners, they must be attentive to importers’ personal characteristics, such as their propensity to innovate. Exporters selling value products should communicate CCI more clearly and, when targeting innovative importers, opt for atypical products instead of traditional ones. For premium products, which require more complex decisions, exporters should especially underscore product typicality and, with innovative importers, emphasize positive CCI.
Originality/value
By focusing on the two critical issues of product selection and price levels, this study’s original contribution is to emphasize that, for the same product category, in industrial purchasing decisions of value versus premium products, the COO effect can be different. It also highlights the importance of investigating the COO effect by concentrating on industrial buyers’ personal characteristics, here the DSI of importers, as moderating variables.