Safety management by walking around (SMBWA): a safety intervention program based on both peer and manager participation.

"Management by walking around" (MBWA) is a practice that has aroused much interest in management science and practice. The purpose of this study is to demonstrate adaptation of this practice to safety management. We describe a three-year long case study that collected empirical data in which a modified MBWA was practiced in order to improve safety in a semiconductor fabrication facility.

A computerized multidimensional measurement of mental workload via handwriting analysis.

The goal of this study was to test the effect of mental workload on handwriting behavior and to identify characteristics of low versus high mental workload in handwriting. We hypothesized differences between handwriting under three different load conditions and tried to establish a profile that integrated these indicators. Fifty-six participants wrote three numerical progressions of varying difficulty on a digitizer attached to a computer so that we could evaluate their handwriting behavior.

Safety perception referents of permanent and temporary employees: safety climate boundaries in the industrial workplace.

Objective: To explore the significant referents of safety perceptions among permanent and temporary employees in order to identify the boundaries of safety climate in a heterogeneous workforce.

Method: Collection of data from semi-structured interviews with employees in manufacturing organizations, using a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods to identify basic safety perceptions. Independent raters used content analysis to examine the data.

The social aspects of safety management: trust and safety climate.

This study tested the contribution of trust between leaders and subordinates to safety. It is suggested that leaders who create a relationship of trust with their subordinates are more likely to create a safe working environment, and to achieve higher and stronger safety-climate perceptions among their subordinates. Hence, trust should be negatively related to injuries and positively related to safety climate.

Testing safety commitment in organizations through interpretations of safety artifacts.

Problem: Safety culture relates to injuries and safety incidents in organizations, but is difficult to asses and measure. We describe a preliminary test of assessing an organization's safety culture by examining employee interpretations of organizational safety artifacts (safety signs).

Method: We collected data in three organizations using a new safety culture assessment tool that we label the Safety Artifact Interpretation (SAI) scale; we then crossed these data with safety climate and leadership evaluations.

The effect of workers' visibility on effectiveness of intervention programs: supervisory-based safety interventions.

Introduction: This paper discusses an organizational change intervention program targeting safety behaviors and addresses important considerations concerning the planning of organizational change. Using layout of the plant as a proxy for ease of daily leader-member interaction, the effect of workers' visibility on the effectiveness of supervisory-based safety (SBS) interventions is examined. Through a reinforcement-learning framework, it is suggested that visibility can affect supervisors' incentive to interact with subordinates regarding safety-related issues.