Workplace Safety Culture Model [WSCM]: Presentation and Validation

Abstract

The literature on Workplace Safety Culture (WSC) has evolved in the conceptual dimension in a movement away from technical aspects toward more human aspects, but remains incipient regarding the creation of measurement instruments and quantitative evaluation with a totality of technological, organisational and human factors.To fill this gap, this article presents and validades the Workplace Safety Culture Model (WSCM) applied in a survey, with a total of 1196 operational employees of six factories, frommetallurgical sector. To validate the WSCM, the statistical procedure Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) was used to reduce the set of variables to a lower number of factors to characterize the attribute dimensions of the object in question. The results presents a reduced version of the proposed model, distributed in ten factors: Leadership, Commitment, Pressure at Work, Infrastructure, Learning, Efficiency, Management System, Feedback, Responsibility,and Communication.The results of the EFA produced a factor structure with relatively higher loads on the appropriate factors. The WSCMoffers us a robust tool to analyze an organization's WSC maturity. For the methodological improvement of the model, we suggest future research with diverse cultural contexts.