SAFETY CAPITAL AND SAFETY PARTICIPATION OF OSHMS IN MALAYSIAN MANUFACTURING COMPANIES: THE MEDIATION EFFECT OF SAFETY TEAMWORK

Abstract

Experience with Occupational Safety and Health Management System (OSHMS) has shown
that everyone’s participation is important for the system to act as an effective prevention
mechanism towards accidents at work. Occupational accidents affected employee’s morale
towards work and become an additional cost to the recovery direct or indirect cost and the
rebuilding of company’s reputation. This study was carried out to determine the relationship
between safety capital (management safety commitment, safety training, extrinsic reward,
intrinsic reward, employee involvement and safety teamwork) and safety participation in
OSHMS using the resource-based view (RBV) theory. A total of 100 responses were collected
from Malaysian manufacturing firms certified with OHSAS 18001. Data were analysed using
the Smart Partial Least Square (SmartPLS). Results showed that management safety
commitment, extrinsic reward, safety training and employee involvement affect safety
teamwork. Furthermore, findings show that safety teamwork mediates the relationship of
management safety commitment, employee involvement towards safety participation in
OSHMS. In conclusion, this research has shown that management commitment has an
important and consistent role in encouraging collaborative safety efforts that would lead to
organisational participation in OSHMS. Theoretically, safety teamwork proves to be an
important mediation effect towards safety participation in OSHMS but not for rewards and
training factors. Teamwork has no mediation effect on these factors towards safety
participation.