Investigating the Relationship between Organizational Climate and Safety Climate at a Manufacturing Industry

Abstract

Organizational and safety climates are respectively general and specific forms of climates within organizations, which can affect individuals' performance. Organizational climate (OC) refers to the people’s behavioral patterns, attitudes and feelings within the organization. Safety climate (SC) refers to employees' perception of the organizational approach toward safety policies. This study was aimed to investigate the association between OC and SC in one tile industry. This cross-sectional and analytical study conducted using two standard questionnaires, sussman & deep and NOSACQ-50 for the assessment of OC and SC, respectively. The Kolmogorov – Smirnov test was used to evaluate the normality of the quantitative data. Spearman, Mann-Whitney U and Kruskal-Wallis tests were also used for statistical analysis of the gathered data. Our study represents the existence of significant and positive association between the dimensions of OC and SC. A significant association was found between the OC, working departments and type of employment. In addition, a significant association was found between SC and working departments, as well. Consideration of the OC, as a factor affecting SC, seems to be vital to be taken into account in researches. OC may affect people's attitudes toward organizational safety policies, which may therefore be defined as a factor affecting safety performance of organizations.

Keywords

• Organizational Climate
• Safety Climate
• Sussman & Deep Questionnaire
• NOSACQ-50
• Manufacturing Industry.