The PAPER Important Notes

Zohar, D. (2002) - Transactional and Transformational leadership provide

The effects of leadership dimensions, complementary modes of influence on safety behaviour of
safety climate on minor injuries. group members.

Flin, R., and Yule, S.(2004) - The purpose of this paper was to review the literature on
Leadership for safety: leadership and safety in order to highlight possible
Industrial experience applications to health care
- Effective leadership has been shown to improve safety
performance in high hazard and complex working
environments such as aviation, energy, and manufacturing.
- Transformational and transactional leadership theory may
provide a useful model for health care in relation to patient
safety.
(Clarke, 2013) - It showed that both transformational and transactional
Safety leadership: A meta-analytic review leadership are important aspects of effective safety
of leadership
transformational and transactional - Transformational leadership is associated with encouraging
leadership styles as antecedents of safety employee participation in safety while Active Transactional
behaviours leadership is important to ensure compliance with
regulations, in contrast, passive leadership (MBEP,
Laissez-faire) has demonstrated negative effects on
workplace safety.
Nahrgang, Morgeson, and Hofmann - showed that leadership (broadly defined) was closely
(2011) related to both compliance and engagement (where
Safety at work: A meta-analytic Investigation of engagement included safety participation, but was
the link between job demands, job resources,
burnout, engagement, and safety outcomes.
morewide-ranging)
Cooper, M.D.,( 1998) - Verified two important leadership behavior facets
Improving Safety Culture: A Practical (dimensions): caring and controlling.
Guide.
O’Dea & Flin (2001) - Proposed four important issues concerning safety
leadership: visibility, relationship management, workforce
involvement, and proactive management.
- Suggested that the relationship between safety leadership,
safety climate and safety performance is worth more
attention.
Carrillo (2002) - Presented a three-dimensional safety leadership model:
Safety leadership formula trust and credibility, developing the competencies for
safety excellence, and reaching safety excellence by turning
vision into actions. This leadership model puts emphasis on
organization members’ trust and credibility, and, at the
same time, develops the ability of safety excellence and
forms a vision of safety excellence.

- The author defines safety leadership in this study as “the

Wu, T.-C. (2005)
The Validity and Reliability of Safety
Leadership Scale in Universities of Taiwan
Wu, T.C., Chen, C.H., Li, C.C., (2007)
Correlation among safety leadership,
safety climate and safety performance.
C.-S. Lu, C.-S. Yang (2009)
Safety leadership and safety behavior in
container terminal operations
Du and Sun (2012)
the relationship between safety
leadership and safety climate in
coalmines
B. Fernández-Muñiz et el(2014)
Safety leadership, risk management and
safety performance in Spanish
firms
Dominic Cooper (2016)
Effective Safety Leadership (An Article)
process of interaction between leaders and followers,
through which leaders could exert their influence on
followers to achieve organizational safety goals under the
circumstances of organizational and individual factors
- It includes three important domains: safety coaching, safety
caring, and safety controlling.
- The author proposed that safety leadership will impact
safety performance through the mediating effect of safety
culture.
- The author designed 45 self-administered questions for this
scale.
- Three dimensions on the safety leadership scale: safety
coaching, safety caring, and safety controlling.
- There are two paths that will affect safety performance.
One goes from safety leadership, through safety climate, to
safety performance, while the other goes from safety
leadership to safety performance.
- Safety leadership is an important factor influencing self-
reported safety behavior.
- Three safety leadership dimensions are used in this study,
namely: safety motivation, safety policy, and safety
concern. Safety motivation and safety concern are aspects
of transformational leadership; safety policy is closely
linked to transactional leadership.
- Safety leadership is an important factor influencing safety
climate in coal mine that must be taken into consideration
by coal mine managers.
- Three safety leadership dimensions are used in this study ,
namely: Active management, safety motivation and safety
monitor
- To measure Safety Leadership the authors distinguished
between two leadership styles: transactional leadership and
transformational leadership.
Transactional leadership uses 3 items relating to rewards or
punishments, while transformational leadership uses 7
items relating to the managers’ supportiveness and general
concern for employees’ well-being
- The results of this work show the importance of the human
factor in improving safety outcomes and that
transformational leadership is more effective than the
transactional style
- Leaders also typically adopt one of three main leadership
styles: 1) transformational; 2) transactional; and 3) servant
- A leader should adapt his/her style based on the demands
of the situation, the requirements of those involved and the
challenges facing the company. Ultimately, it is not all
about the leader’s needs; it is much more about the
 followers’ needs and ensuring the success of those being
led.

Chunlin Wu et al (2016)
How safety leadership works among
owners, contractors and subcontractors
in construction projects
Chua Jing Lun¹, Shah Rollah Abdul
Wahab² (2017)
The Effects of Safety Leadership on
Safety Performance in Malaysia.
Tarila Zuofaa*, Edward G. Ocheingb
(2017)
Senior managers and safety leadership
role in offshore oil and gas construction
projects
Luke Daniel (2015)
Safety Leadership Defined within the
Australian Construction Industry
- The dimensions used here are: safety influence and role
modeling, safety motivation and coaching, safety caring and
individual respect, safety controlling and performance
management.
- An impacting mechanism involving owner safety leadership,
contractor safety leadership and subcontractor safety
leadership are hypothetically proposed and empirically
tested. The results show that significant relationships exist
between safety leaderships of the three key stakeholders.
- Three dimensions on the safety leadership scale: safety
coaching, safety caring, and safety controlling. As they can
be generalized to other industries.
- This study supported the important constructs of safety
leadership in affecting the workplace safety.
- In summary, variety of leadership styles such as the
transactional, transformation and autocratic styles were
mentioned as major leadership styles utilized by most
senior managers handling offshore oil and gas projects.
- It was concluded that leadership style has a role critical for
the implementation of any effective safety management
system utilized during offshore project operations.
- Gaps were identified in the literature that indicated safety
leadership is not a well-defined concept and much of the
work into safety leadership has been borrowed from other
schools of leadership.

Nonetheless, while Wu (2005)[41] named

her safety dimensions as safety caring, safety coaching,

and safety controlling, there had been some situations

when other scholars would have revised the names of

such dimensions to other labels while retaining the

meanings each dimensions carrying at the same time.

Therese situations occurred when Lu and Yang

(2010)[27] and Du and Sun (2012)[14] labelled Wu’s

(2005)[41] safety caring into safety motivation and

active management respectively while safety coaching

had been named safety policy and safety monitoring

respectively by Lu and Yang (2010)[27] and Du and

Sun (2012)[14] respectively.

How safety leadership works among owners, contractors and subcontractors in construction
projects

Several previous studies have examined the effects of safety leadership on safety performance
(O'Dea and Flin, 2001; Barling et al., 2002; Zohar, 2002; Neal and Griffin, 2006; Griffin and Hu,
2013). Safety leadership is a sub-system of leadership (Pater, 2001), and can be defined as “the
process of interaction between leaders and followers, through which leaders can exert their
influence on followers to achieve organizational safety goals under the circumstances of
organizational and individual factors” (Wu et al., 2008). Leadership is fully implicated in safety,
and a majority of previous studies focused on the Full 790 C. Wu et al. / International Journal of
Project Management 34 (2016) 789–805 Range Leadership (FRL) model, which mainly contains
transformational and transactional leaderships (Barling et al., 2002; Lu and Yang, 2010).
Transactional leadership is related to monitoring and rewarding whereas transformational
leadership is directed towards inspiring and genuinely motivating the workforce (Reid et al.,
2008). Transformational leadership has four dimensions: idealized influence, inspirational
motivation, intellectual stimulation and individualized consideration. Transactional leadership
contains two dimensions: contingent reward and management-byexception (Avolio et al., 1999).
The FRL model containing transformational leadership and transactional leadership can be
regarded as the foundation of the safety leadership factor structure (Wu et al., 2015). Many
other studies constructed their specific dimensions of safety leadership in order to better
measure it. Dimensions of safety leadership reported in the literature include safety motivation,
safety inspiring, safety policy, safety concern, safety monitoring, safety learning, safety
coaching, safety caring, safety controlling, etc. (Wu, 2005; Wu et al., 2008; Lu and Yang, 2010;
Griffin and Hu, 2013). Almost all these studies took into account different aspects of
transformational/transactional leadership. As a result, the identified dimensions have close
relationships with those of transformational/transactional leadership. For example, safety
motivation and safety inspiring have similar meanings with idealized influence and inspirational
motivation. Safety learning and safety coaching overlap with intellectual stimulation. Safety
caring is related to individual consideration. Safety policy, safety monitoring and safety
controlling are closely linked to contingent reward and management-by-exception (Wu et al.,
2015). Based on the FRL model, Wu et al. (2015) made an ethnographic study on construction
projects and identified four categories of safety leadership practices, which interpreted the
types of safety leaders required in the construction industry. They are safety influence and role
modeling, safety motivation and coaching, safety caring and individual respect, safety
controlling and performance management. This paper selects the above four categories as the
four dimensions of safety leadership for owner project managers and contractor construction
managers (i.e. OPSL and CCSL), and further develops safety leadership measurement scales
based on these dimensions. The first three dimensions are associated with transformational
leadership, and the last one relates to transactional leadership. Safety influence and role
modeling indicates whether the leader holds subordinates' trust, maintains their faith and
respect, shows dedication to them, appeals to their hopes and dreams and acts as their role
model in their own safety management and leadership. It is based on the leaders' charisma and
the capability of being influential about ideals, which in turn requires the highest level of
morality of leaders (Bass, 1999). Favorable role models built by leaders are able to predict better
performance in other dimensions of subordinates' safety behaviors, including motivation,
perception, knowledge and managerial capabilities, so it is the first and foremost dimension of
transformational leadership (Bass, 1999). Safety motivation and coaching measures the degree
to which the leader provides a vision, uses appropriate symbols and images to help subordinates
focus on their safety work, encourages them to be creative in looking at old problems in new
ways, and ultimately improve their motivation and knowledge in safety management. Safety
caring and individual respect indicates the degree to which the leader shows interest in
subordinates' well-being, assigns projects individually, and pays attention to those who seem
less involved in the group. Safety controlling and performance management focuses on
monitoring task execution for any problems that might arise and correcting those problems to
maintain current performance. It also shows the degree to which the leader tells others what to
do in order to be rewarded, emphasizes what you expect from them and recognizes their
accomplishments. It is the institutional basis for the realization of the owner's safety philosophy,
and also the foundation for the other three safety leadership dimensions in our paper because
leaders have to be able to control and remove any organizational obstacles against goal
realization before caring, motivating, influencing and conveying the right philosophy (Cooper,
1998; Wu et al., 2015). For SSSL, i.e. subcontractor supervisor safety leadership, many previous
studies applied the empowering leadership scale for its measurement (Martínez-Córcoles et al.,
2011; MartínezCórcoles et al., 2012; Bobbio et al., 2012). Empowering leadership is a group
(team) leadership model that is suitable for capturing the specific influence of group leaders
(which are supervisors in construction projects) on group performance (Arnold et al., 2000). Five
dimensions are involved, including leading by example, participative decision making, coaching,
informing and showing concern/interacting with employees.

Caring behavior refers to paying attention to the welfare of the organization’s members,
providing help when needed, establishing harmonious relationship with subordinates,
maintaining effective communication channels, and offering anything beneficial to subordinates.
Controlling behavior includes setting up goals, maintaining performance level, clarifying
members’ role, expectation, and duty, and encouraging members to follow regulations and
procedures.