Operationalisation of Safety Culture to Foster Safety and Health in the Malaysian Manufacturing Industries

Abstract

Rapid economic growth via industrialization has given not only a significant impact in terms of income distributions and quality of life, but it also resulted in increasing number of accidents at workplace. In reducing risk at the workplace, Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) is an important aspect. It is a standard which are set in legislation with the aim to eliminate and reduce hazards at workplace. Besides OSH, the term 'safety culture' is also an important aspect in reducing risk and accident at workplace. This paper discuss on the operationalisation of safety culture to foster safety and health for the Malaysian manufacturing industries. Operationalisation is the process of specifying the extension of a concept which in turn, will convert the concept into a measure. Hence, operationalisation will make possible concept to be uniformly understood and used since no measurement has ever been established to determine the current state of safety culture in the Malaysian manufacturing industries. A methodology quantitative was adopted towards a comprehensive understanding of safety culture amongst operational workers in Malaysian manufacturing industries. The preliminary survey has identified management commitment, safety leadership, training and education and employees involvement as important behavioral aspects. The findings generated from selected operational workers in Malaysian manufacturing industries reveal that safety culture comprises of both the behavioral and situational aspects. These identified behavioral aspects were further included in the main survey and combined with situational aspects towards safety culture in manufacturing industries. At the end, this study is expected to help policy makers and government to formulate new, effective and efficient policies and strategies that will promote a safety and health working environment, which in turn will be a workplace culture in this sector.

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