Safety-Specific Transformational Leadership, Safety Management Practices And Safety Motivation In Petroleum Industry

Safety-Specific Transformational Leadership

Supervisors should offer supportive behaviours and deliver safety value, which can increase safety concerns of employees (Prussia et al., 2018). Transformational leadership includes four components, which are idealized influence, inspirational motivation, individual consideration, and intellectual stimulation could reflect the commitment and support of supervisors and safety-specific transformation leadership is identified as a special transformational leadership in safety area, which could create a safe working environment and increase the employee motivation to participate in safety promoting program (Shen et al., 2017). In fact, the original transformational leadership dimensions such as idealized influence refers to the degree to which employees regard their leaders as an example and follow their leaders’ behaviour while inspirational motivation means that employees are encouraged to seek for something beyond their own objectives in an inspirational way. Moreover, intellectual stimulation involves inspiring employees to be innovative and creative and individualized consideration refers to the concern and respect from leaders on individual employees (Bono & Judge, 2004). Leaders with idealized influence focus on the long-run productivity instead of short-term profits. Leaders with high level of idealized influence could communicate safety as a core value through their own behaviour and commitments, which are critical for employee safety performance (Shen et al., 2017). Leaders who demonstrated inspirational motivation persuade their subordinates that they can achieve safety levels, which are previously considered unattainable now could be achieved in an inspirational way by using symbols and stories to state the mission (Toderi et al., 2016). Leaders with intellectual stimulation tend to encourage and challenge their subordinates to confront long-held assumptions and motivate subordinates to have an innovative way of thinking to improve and enhance occupational safety (Prussia et al., 2018). In addition, when transformational leadership is connected with safety-specific point the definition will be correspondently changed in order to meet the concept of workplace safety, which reflects that how leaders value and balance production targets and safety (Hansez & Chmiel, 2010). Safety commitment by the leaders in the workplace is very important to help employees gain the perception of management support, which in turn influence their safety motivation (Jiang & Probst, 2016). The commitment on safety from management plays an important role in the employee safety motivation and safety performance in the workplace (Hoffmeister et al., 2014). It is said that the competency and commitment of the supervisors are the driving factors to improve employee safety motivation and reduce the accident rate and compensation cost which could benefit both employees and organizations (Nicole et al., 2018). Hoffmeister et al. (2014) explored the four dimensions of transformational leadership on safety to predict the safety outcomes whereas got a conclusion that idealized influence from safety-specific transformational leadership dimensions has the strongest relationship with safety outcomes. In this degree, safety-specific transformational leadership will be more suitable to be adopted in the Petroleum Industry to examine the relationship with safety motivation.

Safety Management Practices

Safety management practices that are perceived by the employees are highly related with safety environment in the workplace. The role of organization is essential for workplace safety (Mearns et al., 2003). In this study, six dimensions of safety management practices adopted which are management commitment, safety training, employee involvement, safety communication and feedbacks, implementation of safety rules and safety procedures and safety promotion policies will be applied. Leaders with high-level management commitment focus on the long-run productivity instead of short-term profits. Perceived safety commitment from organization has an important influence on individual safety performance and organizational safety outcomes (Barling et al., 2002). In addition, management commitment refers to management has priority and efficient reaction for safety issues, corrective actions, safety meeting attendance, accident and near miss analysis and adequate personal protection equipments offer. Perceived management commitment from employees is highly significantly associated with safety performance in the workplace. Employee prefers to conduct more voluntary behaviour and probability to participate in safety-related exchange or activities that are motivated by norm of reciprocity if their managers concern and value safety and make their commitment to safety (Subramaniam et al., 2016). Moreover, safety training in safety management practices could facilitate safety programs and prevent potential hazards as comprehensive, effective and adequate safety training must be provided to new employees and other employees on a regular base in the organization to help employees gain certain knowledge. Safety training often includes safety hazard assessment, safety issue identification and emergency handle. Employee involvement refers to individuals or groups are involved in the upward communication and decision-making process flow within the organization, which offers employees a chance to make suggestions and express opinions for further improvements and final decision (Vinodkumar & Bhasi, 2010). Vredenburgh (2002) mentioned that safety promotion and reward system under the safety management practices could improve individual safety motivation and safety promotion policies, which could be measured by regarding safety conduct as an evaluating factor for promotion and rewards, hazard report encouragement, safety week celebration arrangement, healthy competition on safety issue and a welcome attitude from supervisors who report safety issues. Keffane (2015) adopted six-safety management practices (management commitment, employee involvement, safety training, safety communication and feedbacks, implementation of safety rules and safety procedures and safety promotion policies) to predict safety performance mediated by safety knowledge and safety motivation for the road safety. With the conclusion that safety training and safety promotion policy are positively related with safety motivation while management commitment and safety communication and feedback are positively correlated with safety knowledge, among them safety feedback is identified as most important safety management factor to predict the safety performance in the road practices. In this degree, safety management practices will be more suitable to be adopted in the Petroleum Industry to examine the relationship with safety motivation.

Safety Motivation

Motivated employee is ready to contribute more extra efforts for workplace safety. Safety motivation is an important factor for enhancing and improving safety performance so in the petroleum organizations under the high-hazard environment safety improvement and safety management constitute an essential part for the organizations (Griffin & Neal, 2000). Jiang and Probst (2016) stated that safety motivation was positively correlated with safety programs prompt mediated by transformational leadership, which indicated that safety motivation offers the potential for employees to take participate in safety programs. Safety motivation requires more voluntary and more willingness from employees to contribute to safety issues and safety programs in the workplace (Tay et al., 2017). Khaleghinejad and Ziaaldini (2015) pointed out that safety motivation and safety knowledge have a mediating role in the relationship between safety climate and safety performance, which could be an important factor to enhance and improve safety performance. In this study, the relationship between safety-specific transformational leadership, safety management practices and safety motivation will be examined. Griffin and Neal (2000) prompted that knowledge and motivation about safety are positively related with individual safety performance, which also have a mediating influence on the relationship between safety climate and individual safety performance. Hedlund et al. (2016) indicated that safety motivation is vital to enhance individual safety performance in the workplace. Bunner et al. (2018) stated that safety motivation had a direct positive relationship with safety performance. In this degree, safety motivation will be more suitable to be adopted in the petroleum industry. This section will explore the two variables, which are safety-specific transformational leadership and safety management practices and examine their influence on safety motivation of employees in Chinese Petroleum Companies.

Leaders-Member Exchange as Theoretical Background

Hofmann and Morgeson (1999) established link between leader-member exchange (LMX) and perceived organizational support (POS) with safety-related outcomes: safety communication, safety commitment and accidents, which concluded that LMX was significantly related with safety communication, safety commitment and accidents. LMX theory has widely been adopted to gain an insight on the job performance, work commitment, safety behavior, job satisfaction and turnover intentions (Mariani et al., 2017). Leader-member exchange (LMX) was explored to describe the quality of relationship between subordinates and leaders in the organizations. The commitment of management in this study identified under the leader-member exchange (LMX) theory is safety-specific transformation leadership, which includes idealized influence, individual consideration, intellectual stimulation and inspirational motivation. In this study management commitment under the leader-member exchange (LMX) theory result in implicit safety obligation then potential for safety motivation, which in turn benefits the leaders and the organizations in the long run. Michael et al. (2006) pointed out that under the high-quality relationship of leaders and members both in-role and extra-role behaviors will be conducted by employees within the leader and organizational expectation. Zhou and Jiang (2015) mentioned that high quality LMX could stimulate stronger motivation from employees as reciprocity, which may result in more in-role and extra-role behavior. Moreover, Mariani et al. (2017) conducted a study between safety climate and safety performance mediated by safety knowledge and safety motivation and moderated by LMX, which concluded that high-quality LMX is correlated with positive safety performance and citizenship behaviour engagement by employees in the workplace. The present study is conducted through the LMX theory to gain a better understanding for the interactions between supervisors and subordinates as safety motivation will help employees react to positive social interaction with management when a sense of respect, concern, trust and admiration is gained. Therefore, LMX is regarded as theoretical background for current study.

Hypothesis and Research Framework

H1: Safety-specific transformational leadership (idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, individualized consideration) is positively related with safety motivation.

H2: Safety management practices (management commitment, safety training, employee’s involvement, safety communication and feedbacks, implementation of safety rules and safety procedures, safety promotion policies) are positively related with safety motivation.

Based on literature review and the gap identification the research framework for this conceptual paper is summarized as below (Figure 01 ):

Safety-specific Transformational Leadership     Safety Management Practices             Safety Motivation Safety-specific Transformational Leadership     Safety Management Practices             Safety Motivation

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Data collection method

Several Chinese Petroleum Companies were contacted through mobile phone and website e-mail. Among these Petroleum Companies, two of them agreed us to conduct questionnaire survey at its workplace. Support letters from HR departments in these two Petroleum Companies were gained at first. A formal cover letter, which described the confidentiality and anonymity of respondents was sent to each respondent before filling up the questionnaire. As the original questionnaire is in English language back-to-back translation method is adopted in order to make sure no ambiguity exists between original one and translated one. Due to the nature of tight work schedule of first line workers the translated questionnaire try to be made as pain as possible for easy understanding. Judgement sampling, which contains non-probability sampling and purposive sampling is adopted. Respondents are selected randomly and only full-time Chinese first line workers are targeted in these two Petroleum Companies.

Sample size

In order to calculate the minimum sample size G* power 3.1 software was adopted with the settings: f²=0.15 (medium), ɑ=0.05 with the number of predictors two. The minimum sample size in this study calculated by G*power 3.1 software is 68.

Unit of analysis

The target respondents in this study are the first line workers in Chinese Petroleum Companies as they directly deal with the daily oil operation and production. First line workers in Petroleum Companies are more likely to be exposed to harsh and toxic environment with potential hazards. So, the full-time Chinese first line workers in Petroleum Companies are targeted in this study.

Measurement of variables

This questionnaire is self-administered and consists of two sections. The first section is about demographic information of respondents. Section B is about constructs items. Safety-specific transformational leadership comprises of 10 items adapted from Toderi et al. (2016) while safety management practices consists of 35 items adopted from Vinodkumar and Bhasi (2010). Safety motivation consists of six items adopted from Griffin and Neal (2000). Respondents were invited to answer the questionnaire on 5-point Likert scale from 1=strongly disagree to 5=strongly agree.

Data analysis

PLS-SEM (partial least squares structural equation modelling) would be adopted to examine the hypothesis and regression in this study, which is implemented by Smart PLS-SEM 3.2 version software. In PLS-SEM, both the measurement model and structural model analysis need to be assed.