TY - JOUR
T1 - Institutional logics of processing safety in production: The case of heat stress management in a megaproject in Australia
AU - Jia, Andrea Yunyan
AU - Rowlinson, Steve
AU - Loosemore, Martin
AU - Gilbert, Dean
AU - Ciccarelli, Marina
N1 - Funding Information:
The research was funded by School of Built Environment at Curtin University, Australia , when the first author worked there. The field study obtained ethics approval from Human Research Ethics Office of Curtin University, Australia, on 21 August 2015. The authors would like to thank Prof. Xiangyu Wang, A/Prof. Dianne Smith, A/Prof. Jane Matthews, Prof. Steffen Lehmann, Prof. Monty Sutrisna, Prof. John Stephens, Dr. Alfred Olatunji and Prof. Peter Love for their support during the research process. We thank also Prof. Paul Chan and other anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments on an early draft of this paper, and industry partners for their support on the fieldwork.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 Elsevier Ltd
PY - 2019/12
Y1 - 2019/12
N2 - Despite evidence that a safe and healthy workforce is essential to construction project productivity, the resources and time committed to safety are often perceived as counterproductive. This study explores the multiple institutional logics underpinning the duality between safety and productivity in the construction industry. Specifically, it explores the tensions between safety and production through an institutional lens by untangling the institutional logics of processing safety in production. A theory of protection, production and reconciling logics is developed and refined through an in-depth case study of heat stress management in a mega-project in Australia. Ethnographic data were collected over a six-day working week on site, interpreted using institutional analysis and conceptualized with a grounded theory approach. The results confirmed the co-existence of the three logics in the power dynamics between employers, unions, regulators and workers. It is found that the production and the protection logic leads to paradoxical effect of their desired goals, and a reconciling logic emerges in the bottom-up initiatives which aims for community building and leads to improvement in both safety and productivity. However, the reconciling logic was found incomplete and handicapped due to the lack of involvement at senior management level and the production side of the project organization.
AB - Despite evidence that a safe and healthy workforce is essential to construction project productivity, the resources and time committed to safety are often perceived as counterproductive. This study explores the multiple institutional logics underpinning the duality between safety and productivity in the construction industry. Specifically, it explores the tensions between safety and production through an institutional lens by untangling the institutional logics of processing safety in production. A theory of protection, production and reconciling logics is developed and refined through an in-depth case study of heat stress management in a mega-project in Australia. Ethnographic data were collected over a six-day working week on site, interpreted using institutional analysis and conceptualized with a grounded theory approach. The results confirmed the co-existence of the three logics in the power dynamics between employers, unions, regulators and workers. It is found that the production and the protection logic leads to paradoxical effect of their desired goals, and a reconciling logic emerges in the bottom-up initiatives which aims for community building and leads to improvement in both safety and productivity. However, the reconciling logic was found incomplete and handicapped due to the lack of involvement at senior management level and the production side of the project organization.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85069829232&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.ssci.2019.07.004
DO - 10.1016/j.ssci.2019.07.004
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85069829232
SN - 0925-7535
VL - 120
SP - 388
EP - 401
JO - Safety Science
JF - Safety Science
ER -