Management commitment to safety as organizational support: Relationships with non-safety outcomes in wood manufacturing employees

Abstract

Introduction: Employee perceptions of management commitment to safety are known to influence important safety-related outcomes. However, little work has been conducted to explore nonsafety-related outcomes resulting from a commitment to safety. Method: Employee-level outcomes critical to the effective functioning of an organization, including attitudes such as job satisfaction and commitment to the organization, were included on surveys given to 641 hourly production employees at three wood products manufacturing facilities. Participants' were asked about perceptions of management commitment to safety and job-related variables such as perceived dangerousness of their position, organizational commitment, and withdrawal behaviors. Supervisors also rated the performance of each of their hourly subordinates. Results: Results suggest that employee outcomes differ based on perceptions of management's commitment to safety. Specifically, management commitment to safety was positively related to job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and job-related performance. We also found a negative relationship between commitment to safety and employee withdrawal behaviors. Conclusions: Our results suggest that increasing employee perceptions of management’s personal concern for employee well-being through a dedication to safety will result in positive outcomes beyond improved safety performance. These results also imply that there is a type of social exchange between employees and management that may affect employees similarly to perceived organizational support. Impact on Industry: Results further reinforce the value of a commitment to safety by a firm's management. Organizations with a strong commitment to safety may enjoy not only a reduction in safety-related events but also increases in desirable employee attitudes and behaviors.

Introduction

Managers in organizations are faced with competing priorities and may therefore make trade-offs by increasing their commitment to certain aspects of the business while neglecting others. Three of the most common areas that manufacturing management can show commitment to are production, quality, and safety. The commitment exhibited by management can impact a variety of areas, including employee attitudes. For example, an indirect relationship between management commitment to service quality and employees’ job satisfaction has been shown (Hartline & Ferrell, 1996). Others have suggested that demonstrating management commitment through its actions, such as sharing an organizational vision, will lead to increased employee commitment and job satisfaction (Babakus et al., 1999, Niehoff et al., 1990).

Management commitment has also been shown to affect employee behaviors, with notable examples coming from the safety profession. For example, management commitment to safety is one of the drivers of employee safety performance (Stewart, 2001, Bailey, 1997, Cantarella, 1998) and injuries (O'Toole, 2002) in a variety of industries (e.g., Reisinger, Sluss, & Shaffer, 1994). Because management commitment to safety is such an important cornerstone of safety programs (Zohar, 1980), it would seem that safety professionals would seek out all of the benefits to be gained from high levels of commitment in order to promote these to management. However, an area that has received little attention is the relationship between perceptions of management commitment to safety and employee outcomes not related to safety.

Non-safety employee outcomes include work-related attitudes such as commitment and behaviors such as withdrawal (e.g., absenteeism, daydreaming) and on-the-job performance. One of the reasons that employees will exhibit such outcomes is to reciprocate favorable treatment by their employer (e.g., Gouldner, 1960, Rhoades et al., 2001), with the theoretical explanation for this reciprocity found in social exchange (Blau, 1964, Blau, 1977) and organizational support theories (Eisenberger, Huntington, Hutchinson, & Sowa, 1986). Employee perceptions of this “favorable treatment” are formed from “general beliefs concerning how much the organization values their contributions and cares about their well-being” (Eisenberger, Armeli, Rexwinkel, Lynch, & Rhoades, 2001,) p. 42. Therefore, organizations whose representatives exhibit a strong degree of caring for employees should have those actions reciprocated by employees in the form of desired work-related attitudes and behaviors.

Social exchange and organizational support have recently been applied to safety topics with considerable success. For example, Hofmann and Morgeson (1999) suggested that the nature of these exchanges can help to explain incidents and safety-related behaviors. Another form of social exchange (i.e., leader-member exchange) has been used to examine relationships between leadership, safety climate, and subordinates' safety performance (Hofmann, Morgeson, & Gerras, 2003). These findings, combined with results from past works on the effects of management commitment, encouraged us to question whether management commitment to safety is perceived by employees as a form of “caring” by the employer such that it would engender an obligation for reciprocation by the employees.

The purpose of this paper is therefore to extend previous research by investigating whether differences exist in employee-level outcomes (e.g., attitudes and behaviors) based on their perceptions of management commitment to safety. We propose that management commitment to safety will elicit a response similar to what has been shown with a form of social exchange known as perceived organizational support. This paper also provides value to safety professionals by extending our knowledge of the value of management commitment to safety to non-safety outcomes.

We begin by discussing relevant employee-level outcomes and their importance to an organization. Our literature review continues with a discussion of how management commitment to safety relates to organizational support theory and why this may predict commitment's influence on employee outcomes. Finally, we review accident rates in the wood products industry to set the stage for the industrial context in which our data were collected.

This study will focus on the employee-level outcomes of job satisfaction, affective commitment, and withdrawal behavior. These three were chosen in part because of their relevance to safety professionals and also for their value to organizations. For example, these outcomes have been useful for predicting employee turnover (Babakus et al., 1999) and organizational effectiveness (Koys, 2001). We also investigate employees' job-related performance as an outcome variable.

Job satisfaction has been defined in a variety of ways, including as a “harmonious relationship” and a positive and reactive interaction between an individual and his/her environment (O'Reilly, Chatman, & Caldwell, 1991). Pool (1997) speaks of job satisfaction as the developed “attitudes” employees have toward their jobs. High levels of job satisfaction across a workforce are valuable for an organization in part due to its influence on overall company performance (Ostroff, 1992). This relationship may occur with production employees, for example, because less satisfied workers are more likely to be absent, pay less attention to product quality, and so forth (e.g., Duffy, Ganster, & Shaw, 1998), all of which can increase costs for the employer. Low levels of job satisfaction are relevant for safety professionals due in part to its relationship with key outcomes such as increased workers' compensation claims (Anonymous, 1996).

Organizational commitment is a broader concept than job satisfaction since it captures attitudes toward the organization rather than the person's job. Three types of commitment have been defined: (a) affective commitment, (b) continuance commitment, and (c) normative commitment (Meyer et al., 1990, Dunham et al., 1994). Normative commitment refers to the employee's feelings of obligation to remain with the organization, while continuance commitment refers to a person's belief that there is some cost associated with leaving the organization (Allen & Meyer, 1990) or that there are few alternatives to their current job (O'Reilly et al., 1991). This paper focuses on affective commitment, which reflects a person's desire to remain with their employer (Meyer & Allen, 1997). This is desirable for the organization because high levels of affective commitment have been correlated with higher relative individual productivity (Cohen, 1993; Becker, Billings, Eveleth, & Gilbert, 1996). This attitude is thought to result from shared values (O'Reilly & Chatman, 1986) or identification (Shamir, 1991) with the organization, or from higher levels of involvement (Meyer & Allen, 1991).

Withdrawal behaviors include daydreaming on the job, watching the clock, voluntary absenteeism (Hom et al., 1984, Blau, 1998) and tardiness (Adler & Golan, 1981, Gupta & Jenkins, 1983), and, as such, are considered undesirable for an organization. Relationships have been shown between some types of withdrawal behaviors and organizational support (Cropanzano, Howes, Grandey, & Toth, 1997).

Finally, employees' job-related performance was chosen as a variable due to its importance to overall firm performance. Employees make significant contributions to firm performance, and are thought to be sources of competitive advantage for firms in which they are properly leveraged (Barney, 1991, Wright et al., 2003). In extreme cases the survival of the company may depend on the commitment and contributions of employees (DeLong & Vijayaraghavan, 2003).

To better understand how management commitment to safety affects employee outcomes, we utilize Eisenberger and colleagues' (1986) organizational support theory. Organizational support theory is a contemporary social exchange theory assuming that employees will exhibit positive work-related outcomes in reciprocation for valued resources (e.g., pay, training, socioemotional support) received from the employer (Aselage & Eisenberger, 2003). The theory further assumes that employees form beliefs regarding how much the employer values them and their personal well-being. The combination of these intangible benefits forms an attitude in the minds of employees that is known as perceived organizational support (POS).

Following the norm of reciprocity, increases in POS motivate employees to work harder and exhibit attitudes that are congruent with the organization’s goals and objectives (Eisenberger et al., 2001: Aselage & Eisenberger, 2003). We extend this literature into the safety realm by asserting that a production employee would consider safety as a key component in his/her own personal well-being, such that perceived management commitment to safety will be positively related to desirable organizational outcomes. In fact, a recent meta-analysis of the POS literature highlighted the consequences of perceived organizational support, and found strong support for the effects of POS on a variety of employee outcomes (Rhoades & Eisenberger, 2002). For example, perceived organizational support has been positively associated with outcomes such as affective commitment, job satisfaction, making suggestions, and organizational citizenship behaviors, and negatively associated with turnover intentions and withdrawal behaviors (e.g., Eisenberger et al., 1990, Eisenberger et al., 2001, Wayne et al., 1997). Research has examined perceived organizational support in the context of safety-related behavior, but only as it relates to safety communication, safety commitment, and accidents (Hofmann & Morgeson, 1999).

Perceived organizational support also has a positive relationship with employee performance. Relationships have been shown with POS and various performance measures among manufacturing employees (Witt, 1991), police officers (Armeli, Eisenberger, Fasolo, & Lynch, 1998), and steel workers (Eisenberger et al., 1990). It is noteworthy that POS can be enhanced both by supervisors as well as upper management (Rhoades & Eisenberger, 2002).

Perceived organizational support is particularly enhanced when employees believe that their employer has engaged in discretionary actions favorable to the employee (Eisenberger et al., 1997, Rhoades et al., 2001). In the eyes of hourly employees both upper management and supervisory personnel would embody the “employer.” From a safety perspective, a company that shows its commitment to safety by voluntarily enacting suggestions to improve plant floor safety should therefore enjoy higher levels of desired employee attitudes. This would not necessarily be the case if, for example, it installed new machine guards in response to an OSHA audit. Similarly, literature on the effects of transformational leadership has suggested that safety climate will be improved if employees perceive that management acts based on a commitment to their safety as opposed to reacting to regulatory demands (Barling, Loughlin, & Kelloway, 2002).

OSHA recently reported that the wood products manufacturing industry includes some of the most dangerous occupations within its manufacturing division (www.osha.gov). Lumber and wood products manufacturers’ average fatalities were higher than the average number of fatalities reported for coal mining operations (SIC 12), oil and gas extraction operations (SIC 13), agricultural services (SIC 7), and food and kindred production operations (SIC 20). In addition, wood products manufacturing industry employees have higher injury incidence rates than those of other manufacturing industries. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported that injury rates at sawmills and planing mills (8.9 per 100 full-time workers) and furniture and fixtures (8.7 per 100 full-time workers) were higher than the average national injury rate (5.7 per 100 full-time workers) for 2001.

These statistics highlight the prevalence of incidents in wood-based industries and imply that all managers in these industries are not fully committed to safety. We can further infer that many wood industry managers do not fully realize the benefits that can accrue from a commitment to safety. We chose to study this industry in part because of its poor safety record and the need to educate its leaders about the value of a commitment to safety.