Managers, Mates and the Role of Social Exchange

Résumé du livre

The issue of safety in the workplace may be described as an area of both chronic and acute significance to workers, organisations, families and communities. The aim of my research was to develop and test a work-level model of safety climate by incorporating coworker commitment to safety with existing safety climate measures of manager and supervisor commitment to safety. Climate for social exchange, involving management, supervisor and coworker social exchange dynamics, was further proposed as a foundation climate supporting the development of facet-specific safety climate. The application of a levels-of-analysis approach to scale development recognises the hierarchical nature of organisations. Using explicit organisation referents for both the social exchange and safety climate domains and was intended to clarify construct definition, distinction and interrelatedness issues. Self-report surveys completed by 342 front-line workers (excluding supervisors and managers) representing 120 functional work teams in 80 departments, across nine organisations (including contractor affiliates) formed the main cross-sectional sample. Organisations providing less than ten valid front-line worker responses were excluded when describing organisational safety climate profiles (N=6) and work groups with less than two valid responses were excluded form group level analysis (N=77).