Group-level safety climate in the Australian construction industry: within-group homogeneity and between-group differences in road construction and maintenance

In modern organizations it is overly simplistic to assume that a uniform, organization-wide climate for safety develops. Workgroup-level safety climates are more likely to arise in decentralized organizations and their influence on occupational health and safety (OHS) behaviour is likely to be stronger when work is non-routine, as in construction. The existence of workgroup-level safety climates was examined in the Australian construction industry. A group-level safety climate survey was conducted in a road maintenance and construction organization. The clear factorial structure produced in a larger sample of Australian defence logistics workers was not replicated and factors splintered, possibly due to the subject-to-item ratio in the construction study. However, the internal reliability consistency of the factors produced in the earlier pilot study was found to be acceptable for the construction industry data. Two requisite conditions for the existence of group-level safety climates, i.e. (1) within-group homogeneity; and (2) between-group variation, were satisfied within the road construction and maintenance organization. The results indicate that distinct workgroup safety climates exist in construction, providing a theoretical explanation for why some workgroups perform better in OHS than others, despite having similar risk exposure.