IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/conmgt/v37y2019i5p278-293.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The leadership practices of construction site managers and their influence on occupational safety: an observational study of transformational and passive/avoidant leadership

Author

Listed:
  • Martin Grill
  • Kent Nielsen
  • Regine Grytnes
  • Anders Pousette
  • Marianne Törner

Abstract

More than 20% of all reported occupational accidents in Europe in 2015 occurred within the construction industry. Leadership is an imperative antecedent to occupational safety. Transformational leadership is considered a central aspect of safety-promoting leadership and passive/avoidant leadership is considered a central aspect of poor safety leadership. This study aimed to comprehensively elucidate concrete, real-life transformational and passive/avoidant leadership behaviours through context-specific descriptions of day-to-day interactions between construction site managers and employees. A mixed method design was applied, combining structured observations of construction site managers, with questionnaire responses from construction employees. With this design, common method bias was eliminated. The results provide context-specific examples of transformational and passive/avoidant leadership behaviour. High proportions of observed transformational leadership was found to predict high construction site safety. High proportions of observed passive/avoidant leadership was found to predict low construction site safety. The proportion of transformational leadership behaviour was higher among site managers in Sweden than in Denmark, indicating that national cultural context may be an antecedent to safety leadership among construction site managers. Applying less passive/avoidant leadership and more transformational leadership appears to be an effective way for construction site managers to improve occupational safety in the industry.

Suggested Citation

  • Martin Grill & Kent Nielsen & Regine Grytnes & Anders Pousette & Marianne Törner, 2019. "The leadership practices of construction site managers and their influence on occupational safety: an observational study of transformational and passive/avoidant leadership," Construction Management and Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 37(5), pages 278-293, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:conmgt:v:37:y:2019:i:5:p:278-293
    DOI: 10.1080/01446193.2018.1526388
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/01446193.2018.1526388
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/01446193.2018.1526388?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Andrea Bazzoli & Matteo Curcuruto & James I. Morgan & Margherita Brondino & Margherita Pasini, 2020. "Speaking Up about Workplace Safety: An Experimental Study on Safety Leadership," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(18), pages 1-22, September.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:conmgt:v:37:y:2019:i:5:p:278-293. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/RCME20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.