Workplace safety

TLDR

Unsafe work environments have clear consequences for individuals and organizations, yet the literature lacks theoretical and empirical integration, leaving a gap in understanding what is known and what remains to be learned about workplace safety. This review aims to address these shortcomings by integrating theory and evidence. The authors first define workplace safety and develop an integrated safety model (ISM) summarizing theoretical expectations, then conduct a targeted literature review comparing empirical findings to the ISM. The review identifies gaps between theory and research and offers recommendations for future theoretical and empirical work to guide and integrate workplace safety research.

Abstract

Unsafe work environments have clear consequences for both individuals and organizations. As such, an ever-expanding research base is providing a greater understanding of the factors that affect workplace safety across organizational levels. However, despite scientific advances, the workplace safety literature suffers from a lack of theoretical and empirical integration that makes it difficult for organizational scientists to gain a comprehensive sense of (a) what we currently know about workplace safety and (b) what we have yet to learn. This review addresses these shortcomings. First, the authors provide a formal definition of workplace safety and then create an integrated safety model (ISM) based on existing theory to summarize current theoretical expectations with regard to workplace safety. Second, the authors conduct a targeted review of the safety literature and compare extant empirical findings with the ISM. Finally, the authors use the results of this review to articulate gaps between theory and research and then make recommendations for both theoretical and empirical improvements to guide and integrate future workplace safety research.