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domino theory, the notion that if one country becomes Communist, other nations in the region will probably follow, like dominoes falling in a line. The analogy, first applied (1954) to Southeast Asia by President Dwight Eisenhower, was adopted in the 1960s by supporters of the U.S. role in the Vietnam War. The theory was revived in the 1980s to characterize the threat perceived from leftist unrest in Central America.

The domino effect occurs when a small change causes a similar change nearby, which then will cause another similar change, and so on in linear sequence, by analogy to a falling row of dominoes standing on end. The domino effect also relates to a chain of events.

American Psychological Association (APA):

Domino theory. (n.d.). Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia. Retrieved April 01, 2008, from website:

Herbert William Heinrich is an American industrial safety pioneer from the 1930s. He was an Assistant Superintendent of the Engineering and Inspection Division of Travelers Insurance Company when he published his book Industrial Accident Prevention, A Scientific Approach. . . Heinrich's work is the basis for the theory of Behavior-based safety, which holds that as many as 95 percent of all workplace accidents are caused by unsafe acts. Heinrich came to this conclusion after reviewing thousands of accident reports completed by supervisors, who generally blamed workers for causing accidents without conducting detailed investigations into the root causes.

While Heinrich's figure that 88 percent of all workplace accidents and injuries/illnesses are caused by "man-failure" is perhaps his most oft-cited conclusion, his book actually encouraged employers to control hazards, not merely focus on worker behaviors. "No matter how strongly the statistical records emphasize personal faults or how imperatively the need for educational activity is shown, no safety procedure is complete or satisfactory that does not provide for the . . . correction or elimination of . . . physical hazards," Heinrich wrote in his book . Emphasizing this aspect of workplace safety, Heinrich devoted 100 pages of his work to the subject of machine guarding .

Heinrich did safety work across many industries, with published data, which gives guidelines of how to scale up from incidents and near misses to a good estimate of the probability of real accidents.

Heinrich's classic work has been revised into the more recent book, Industrial Accident Prevention: A Safety Management Approach by H. W. Heinrich, Dan Petersen, Nestor R. Roos, Julienne Brown, Susan Hazlett (1980), ISBN-10: 0070280614, ISBN-13: 9780070280618.

American Psychological Association (APA):

Herbert_William_Heinrich. (n.d.). Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved April 01, 2008, from website:

Simply put, Behavior-Based Safety (BBS) is the ”application of science of behavior change to real world problems”.[1] BBS “focuses on what people do, analyzes why they do it, and then applies a research-supported intervention strategy to improve what people do”.[2] At its very core BBS is based on a larger scientific field called Organizational Behavior Analysis.[3]

To be successful a BBS program must include all employees. This includes the CEO to the floor associates. To achieve changes in behavior a change in policy, procedures\and/or systems most assuredly will also need some change. Those changes cannot be done without buy-in and support from all involved in making those decisions.

BBS is not based on assumptions, personal feeling, and/or common knowledge. To be successful, the BBS program used must be based on scientific knowledge.

A good BBS program will consist of:

▪ Common Goals - Both employee and managerial involvement in the process

▪ Definition of what is expected - Specifications of target behaviors derived form safety assessments[4]

▪ Observational data collection

▪ Decisions about how best to proceed based on those data

▪ Feedback to associates being observed

▪ Review

All of the BBS programs reviewed included multilevel teams. Some programs use them in the assessment phase, some in observation and some in review. Some had all three areas using multilevel teams.

Behavior based safety must also have attitude adjustment to be sustaining. It has been proven that “behavior influences attitude and attitude influences behavior”.[5] The goal should be small gains over and over again; continuous growth. BBS is not a quick fix. It is a commitment.

There are numerous programs on how to implement behavior-based safety programs. They vary in price, detail and commitment. But the goal is always the same: eliminate injury. A review [6] of all scientific publications on Behavior-Based safety since the mid 1970's to date shows that different approaches exert different effects. Focusing on workgroups, in static settings was demonstrated to be the most efficient at behavior change and injury reduction.

Criticisms

Donald J. Eckenfelder[11] stated that he felt that “BBS has virtues but lasted too long and cost too much.” He felt that it has been used incorrectly turning the process into a hindrance instead of a help. His analogy was “Water is essential to life: if we fill our lungs with it, it becomes poison.”[11] Some think that BBS has outlived its usefulness. In fact, some feel that BBS “isolates safety instead of integrating it.” (But no examples were given.) It is felt that the continuous inspection is not causing attitude or behavior shift and once it is discontinued, all bad habits come back.[11] (Again this could be true if the program doesn’t include addressing attitude.)

In response to such claims from Unions and others, Prof. Dominic Cooper ,[12]. of BSMS Inc published an article based on a survey of 247 companies implementing Behavior-based safety (or behavioral safety). This revealed that no evidence had been put forward to support these critical assertions. Rather, the evidence overwhelmingly points to positive outcomes. Interestingly, over 92 percent of respondents wanted to work in a company using Behavior-based safety. A recent update available at behavioral- with 1404 responses further supports the usefulness of behavior-based safety in reducing injury causing incidents.

[edit] Observations

BBS is a term used by many without real understanding of what it is.[13] People make judgments on what they hear and not what is fact. Even people in the industry sometimes do not know what the process for BBS is.

HOW PROJECT VARIABLES INFLUENCE

CONSTRUCTION SAFETY PERFORMANCE

A Dissertation Proposal by William A. Stanton, P.E.

January 1, 1995

 

INTRODUCTION

Purpose and Scope of the Study

Two knowledge prerequisites for effective safety management on construction projects are: (1) an understanding of the number and nature of the safety variables that are relevant to any given project situation, and (2) an understanding of how to organize and combine these variables for effective and adaptive use. There are many human, technical, and environmental variables that influence project safety performance. The variables may be classified according to the level at which they come into play. A myriad of variables influence safety performance at the task level. They change as the nature of the construction work changes; therefore, they may be regarded as temporal variables. Examples of these variables are: guarding interior floor openings on elevated decks, cement finishers wearing gloves to protect against cement dermatitis, or using a trench box for protection against trench cave-ins. Temporal safety variables are activated by a few relatively enduring safety variables at the project organizational level. Previous research indicates that there are five principal enduring project safety variables at this level: management commitment; motivational controls; technical controls; worker group processes; and workers’ characteristics. The variables at the project organizational level are, in turn, influenced by factors outside the project organization. Important external factors are: the safety cultures of the general contractor and subcontractor firms, their safety budgets for the project, owner-emphasis on safety, liability concerns, union influence, the influence of insurance carriers, and the impact of OSHA. This study will focus on the interrelationships among the five enduring safety variables at the project organizational level (in italics) and their impact on safety performance. In order to carry out the causal analysis, the variables will need to be measured; therefore, an important aspect of the research will be to determine reliable and valid measures of the variables.

Approach

Two types of models of the five variables and their effects on safety performance will be hypothesized in the study. The first model will be a measurement model that will specify the five enduring safety variables and the empirical measures that operationally define them. The second model will be a causal model that will establish the causal relationships among the variables. The procedure will be to statistically test the hypothesized models against a correlation matrix constructed from empirical measures of the variables. The tests will be conducted using structural equation modeling - a multivariate technique for analyzing a series of dependence relationships among latent and observed variables simultaneously. The proposed models will be compared to competing models to demonstrate that no better-fitting models exist. When good-fitting (and nomologically valid) models are found, the structural parameters of the models will be estimated, and the results will be compared with past research findings. The models and analysis procedure are explained in more detail in the Analysis Section starting on page 11.

Data Source

The data will be collected through a cross-sectional survey conducted at the worksites of several construction companies. The unit of analysis will be workers. It is anticipated that approximately 200 workers will be surveyed. Workers will be asked to respond to a number of questions about the five enduring variables and safety conditions on their projects on a self-administered questionnaire. With most questions, they will be asked to indicate their perceptions on Likert-type rating scales. Demographic information will also be collected from project management personnel.

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

Construction safety performance is influenced by many variables: individual, technical, environmental, and organizational at the micro, meso, and macro levels. The problem of running a safe job is complicated by the fact that the nature of the work, the environment that it is conducted in, and the people involved constantly change. The safety requirements can be totally different from one construction task to another, and the requirements constantly change as the work moves from one stage to another. As the physical environment is transformed, new hazards and obstacles are created for workers as they move about the site. New workers are continuously arriving on the site to take the place of workers who have completed their specialized tasks. They are vulnerable to accidents, until they become aware of hazards on the site and learn how to cope with them. Adding to the problem is the fact that most sites involve multiple employers.

Philip Leather (1987) researched building construction safety from a work design perspective. His synoptic view of the problem was that a multi-factor analysis approach was necessary. He also offered an explanation of why that idea is not prevalent in the construction industry. He writes:

The study of construction safety reveals a complex array of diverse, yet often closely interrelated, factors and relationships. ... a recurring obstacle to developing effective strategies for improving the construction industry’s safety record has been its overriding acceptance of single variable analysis, in particular, its preoccupation with the concept of carelessness as a unifactorial and unqualified explanation of accidents. ... What is needed, instead, is a scheme of understanding and explanation which emphasizes the multiplicity and complexity of accident causation, especially the interrelation of individual, organizational, and job variables.

BACKGROUND

An extensive literature search was performed prior to writing this proposal. Much has been written about the five enduring variables and their impact on safety performance. Also, many accident causation models involving the interaction of the variables have been formulated by researchers. Six of these models were used as support in hypothesizing the multicausal model in this proposal. Taken together, the six models seemed to account for the important organizational, individual, environmental, and technical factors that are involved. Another desirable feature of the models was that they were geared towards management action. As the research progresses, and more is learned about the enduring variables and how they interact to cause good or poor safety performance, the hypothesized causal model may be changed. For now, the six models described below seem to provide a satisfactory conceptual basis for the study.

Heinrich’s Domino Theory Model

In the 1920’s, Herbert W. Heinrich proposed a theory of accident causation based on the examination of thousands of insurance records of industrial accidents. His was the first comprehensive effort by anyone to explain the industrial accident phenomena scientifically. Before Heinrich, people believed that industrial accidents were a matter of fate. In his book, Industrial Accident Prevention (Heinrich 1941), which is now regarded as a classic, he conceptualized a domino theory of accident causation that states:

|[pic|Injuries are caused by accidents. |

|] | |

|[pic|Accidents are caused by unsafe acts and conditions. |

|] | |

|[pic|Unsafe acts and conditions are caused by the faults of persons. |

|] | |

|[pic|Faults of persons are caused by the social environment and ancestry. |

|] | |

Heinrich attempted to show that the accident sequence could be interrupted by removing any one of the dominos in the sequence. Furthermore, he stated that the bull’s eye of the accident prevention target was the unsafe act of a person or a mechanical or physical hazard.

Bird’s Modified Domino Theory Model

Many researchers felt that Heinrich’s theory attributed too much cause to factors internal to workers and neglected the importance of external factors. Around 1970, Frank E. Bird, a researcher with the International Loss Control Institute, revised Heinrich’s domino theory (Bird and O’Shell 1973). Bird’s model was a simple revision, but it was an important insight, because it introduced the thought of managerial error into the accident causation sequence. Bird’s modified domino theory is not as widely accepted by construction managers as Heinrich’s model, probably because Heinrich’s model lets them "off the hook". Blaming workers is easier and less costly than training workers, changing how an operation is performed, or making environmental modifications. Ironically, although Heinrich seemed to emphasize the fault of the worker, a careful study of his writings leaves the reader with the impression that the notion has been over-emphasized. Bird’s revised domino theory is:

|[pic|Injuries are caused by accidents. |

|] | |

|[pic|For every accident there are immediate causes that are related to operational errors. |

|] | |

|[pic|Operational errors are only symptoms of deeper underlying or basic causes related to management errors. |

|] | |

|[pic|The absence of a system of effective control permits the existence of the factors referred to as basic causes. |

|] | |

Kjellen and Larsson’s Accident Research Model

Kjellen and Larsson (1981) developed an accident causation model as a result of research work within the Occupational Accident Research Unit (OARU) of the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden. It was developed to serve as a common conceptual framework for the members of the OARU and as a basis for research into the development of a systematic safety management system. The model operates on two levels: the accident sequence and the underlying determining factors. The accident sequence is a chain of deviations in the planned production process or work environment that results in an injury or property loss. The determining factors are structural properties of the production system that influence the accident sequence indirectly and change slowly in comparison with it. The researchers divided the determining factors into three categories: (1) physical/technical, (2) organizational/economic, and (3) social/individual.

Dawson, Poynter, and Stevens’ Hazards Control Model

Dawson, Poynter, and Stevens (1983) studied the safety programs of eight petrochemical facilities in Great Britain. On the basis of what they found, they proposed a safety management model designed around technical controls and motivational controls. They defined technical controls as controls that are employed against specific hazards. They might involve modifying physical or technical characteristics of the working environment, modifying specific behavior patterns of individuals, or restructuring the way workers and the environment interact. They defined motivational controls as controls that are concerned with the development and maintenance of general safety awareness and management support of technical controls. Motivational controls realistically address the need to purposely manage the motivation to implement technical controls in an environment where the chief concern is the generation of profits. The three principal elements of motivational controls they identified are: (1) setting a safety tone for the organization, (2) definitions of safety responsibility, and (3) developing mechanisms of accountability for safety performance.

Dedobbeleer’s Safety Behavior Model

Dedobbeleer (1985) studied the factors that influence construction workers’ safety behavior on nine building construction projects in the Baltimore, Maryland metropolitan area. She hypothesized a safety behavior model where workers’ safety behavior depended on three primary factors: (1) predisposing factors that related to workers’ safety knowledge, attitudes, and other personal characteristics, (2) enabling factors that related to the availability of safety training, safety equipment, and safety instructions, and (3) reinforcing factors that related to management’s attitude toward safety, foremen’s enforcement of safe conditions and practices, and co-workers’ attitudes toward safety. A basic premise of her study was that workers’ safety behavior is determined by the combined influence and interaction of these three primary factors. The study found that a combination of predisposing and enabling factors explained 51% of the variance in workers’ safety behavior. The study also found that reinforcing factors affected safety behavior, but indirectly, through predisposing factors.

LaFlamme’s Four-Level Systems Model

LaFlamme (1990), a Canadian researcher, devised a four-level model based on a systems approach. The four levels are: (1) work organization, (2) working situation, (3) accidental sequence, and (4) the accident. According to LaFlamme, work organization is a spatial variable and working situation, accident sequence, and the accident are temporal variables. The work organization level involves structural background factors (human and technical) that influence safety performance. The factors at this level concern the design, organization, implementation, and control of work processes. The factors at the second level, working situation, concern the nature of the tasks to be performed, the work environment, the machines and tools required, and the characteristics of the persons who will do the work. The third level, accident sequence, starts when a disturbance occurs in the working situation (system). The sequence can be interrupted by any of the components in the system involved. An example would be an alert foreman who averts an electrical accident by pointing out an overhead power line to a mobile crane operator. If the accident sequence is interrupted, the system will recover to a safe state again. If the sequence is not stopped, it will end as an accident (the fourth level). The accident can result in an injury, property loss, or near-miss.

RESEARCH OBJECTIVES

1. Determine reliable and valid measures of the following latent variables: management commitment, motivational controls, technical controls, workers’ group processes, workers’ personal characteristics, and safety performance.

2. Analyze the causal relationships among the above variables.

HYPOTHESES

The following hypotheses will be statistically tested in the study:

H1: The variation in motivational controls, technical controls, and safety performance is largely accounted for by explanatory causes explicitly included in the hypothesized multicausal model.

H2: The existence of a strong link between workers’ personal characteristics and safety performance is more myth than reality.

H3: The quality of motivational and technical controls is strongly linked to the degree of management commitment.

H4: The greatest determinant of a high degree of safety performance is the control of unsafe conditions.

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