Examining employees’ safety behaviours: an industry-level investigation from Ghana
| Published date | 06 November 2017 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/PR-06-2016-0146 |
| Pages | 1915-1930 |
| Date | 06 November 2017 |
| Author | Samuel Howard Quartey |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour,Global HRM |
Examining employees’safety
behaviours: an industry-level
investigation from Ghana
Samuel Howard Quartey
Department of Human Resource Management, Central Business School,
Central University, Accra, Ghana and
School of Management, Adelaide Business School,
The University of Adelaide, Adelaide, Australia
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of this paper is to examine employees’safetybehaviours (ESBs) within the beverage
manufacturing industry. It also assessed employees’perception of their own safety behaviours. It further
investigated the impact of organisational culture (OC) on ESBs. Finally, the study identified the likely
determinants of ESBs.
Design/methodology/approach –A survey methodology was employed as an appropriate approach.
In total, 197 valid questionnaires were retrieved from employees working in the beverage manufacturing
industry. The questionnaires were processed for quantitative analyses to test the hypotheses. A simple
regression analysis was carried out to assess employees’perception of their own safety behaviours and to
investigate the impact of OC on ESBs. Descriptive frequencies and percentages were used to identify the
determinants of ESBs.
Findings –The results suggest that employees’perception of their own safety behaviour was positive. OC
was reported to have a strong positive impact on ESBs. Safe working conditions, job satisfaction and
organisational leadership were identified as the key organisational determinants of safety behaviours among
the employees.
Research limitations/implications –Interpreting these findings must be done with caution as the sample
size was relatively small and solely obtained from four beverage manufacturing firms. Generalising the
findings from this study must also be carefully done as the study is industry-specific and country-specific.
Practical implications –Besides the loss of talents through unsafe behaviours, accidents can hurt work
performance, productivity and profitability of an organisation. Industry organisations and their managers
can therefore implement perceptual, organisational and cultural interventions that reinforce appropriate
safety behaviours among employees at the workplace.
Social implications –Understanding these cultural, perceptual and organisational perspectives on ESBs is not
only a significant input for safety behavioural analysis and interventions but can also reduce the socioeconomic
cost of unsafe and risk behaviours among employees at the firm, industry, national and global levels.
Originality/value –The empirical tests of employees’perception of their own safety behaviours are heavily
biased towards data originating from the developed country industry settings which suggest that the
dynamics of ESBs in the less developed economies are likely to be unknown. This study is first to examine
ESBs in a developing country beverage manufacturing industry setting.
Keywords Ghana, Organizational culture, Perception of employees’safety behaviours,
Beverage manufacturing industry, Employees’safety behaviours,
Other determinants of employees’safety behaviours
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
The way employees behave towards their own safety can be informed by the cultural
perceptual and organisational dynamics within organisations. Organisational culture (OC) is
a set of core values, norms, artefacts and patterns which govern the way employees in
organisations interact and behave (Van Muijen et al., 1992). Borman and Motowidlo (1993)
Personnel Review
Vol. 46 No. 8, 2017
pp. 1915-1930
© Emerald PublishingLimited
0048-3486
DOI 10.1108/PR-06-2016-0146
Received 28 June 2016
Revised 1 November 2016
Accepted 6 March 2017
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0048-3486.htm
The author would like to acknowledge the staff and supervisors of the selected beverage
manufacturing firms in Ghana for their participation and information. The time and efforts of the
anonymous reviewers of the initial manuscript are also duly acknowledged.
1915
Employees’
safety
behaviours
noted thatemployees’safetybehaviours (ESBs)are the complianceand participationaspects of
workers’attitudes towards safety. However, safety compliance and participation regimes are
often integrated into the culture of an organisation because it is intended to gain a stronger
level of acceptance and behaviours from employees (O’Toole, 2002). Therefore, whether
industriesand their managersare aware or not, their OCmay underpin employees’behaviours
towards safety. As a result, this study assesses the impact of OC on ESBs.
This is because cultural perspectives on ESBs are poorly treated in safety research
(Tharaldsen and Haukelid, 2009). Consequently, there is the need for a more cultural
understanding of how employees behave towards their own safety at the workplace.
The behaviours of employees towards their own safety can be considered as a perception
(Zohar, 1980). Safety perception is described as a coherent set of expectations that
employees have regarding safety (Zohar, 2000). Employees are able to support workplace
safety when they themselves can demonstrate and perceive appropriate safety behaviours
(O’Toole, 2002). Thus, beside their organisations, employees can also make a meaningful
and perceptual interpretation of their own safety behaviours. Although several studies have
measured safety perceptions in diverse industries (e.g. Martínez-Córcoles et al., 2011;
Zohar, 2000; O’Toole, 2002), however, less scholarly works have examined how employees
perceive their own safety behaviours at the workplace. This study, therefore, assesses
employees’perception of their own safety behaviours.
The determinants of ESBs can also be multifactorial.As indicated by Carnino et al. (1990),
there aremore complex organisational factorsthat influenceESBs than we can possiblyknow.
This suggests that ESBs may not be influenced only by OC or perception. Possibly, there can
be other likely influences on ESBs that may be unknown. Therefore, the study seeks to identify
the other likely determinants of employees’own safety behaviours.
The paucity of research on safety behaviour-related studies in developing African
countries, particularly in Ghana constitutes the main reason for this investigation. Thus, this
study sought to achieve three objectives by investigating ESBs by collecting a survey data
from employees working in Ghana’s beverage manufacturing industry. The first objective is
to assess employees’perception of their own safety behaviours. The second objective is to
investigatethe impact of OC on ESBs. The thirdobjective is to identify theother determinants
of employees’own safety behaviours.
The rest of this study is organised as follows. The second section provides a brief
background to the case organisation –Ghana’s beverage manufacturing industry. The third
section reviews existing theories or literature and formulates hypotheses to be tested.
The fourth section describes the research method. The fifth section presents the main
findings of this study. The sixth section discusses the key findings and the final section
concludes the study and highlights the theoretical and managerial implications by
providing fresher insights into ESBs in the beverage manufacturing industry.
Background of the beverage manufacturing industry in Ghana
Ghana is a country in the Sub-Saharan Africa and West-Africa Sub-region. Ghana’s
manufacturing industry has seen tremendous growth and challenges in recent years.
The growth of the industry is attributed to a number of factors. Ghana’smanufacturing
industry received a boost in 1957 when then government launched an industrialisation
drive. This drive created a wide range of industrial enterprises including the beverage
manufacturing industry (Sutton and Kpentey, 2012). This has also led to many industry
dynamics where the beverage manufacturing industry has so many subsectors such as
non-alcoholicand alcoholic firms producingwide ranges of beverages to the localand foreign
markets (Sutton and Kpentey, 2012). Trade liberalisation of Ghana’s economy and the
country’s economic recovery programme like the structural adjustment programme has also
led to an increasedexpansion of this industry.An expansion that has opened up thebeverage
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