The Impact of Organizational Safety Culture on Safety Behavior : Focusing on the Moderating Role of Supervisor Safety Competence

This study aims to develop an index to measure the safety culture of workplaces in Korea using data from the 10th Occupational Safety and Health Survey, analyze the impact of organizational safety culture and supervisor safety competence on organizational-level safety behavior, and examine the moderating role of supervisor safety competence. The hypotheses were tested using data from 4,430 companies in the manufacturing and service industries through Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) and the SPSS PROCESS MACRO. Reliability and validity tests yielded a safety culture measurement scale comprising four sub-dimensions and 14 items, and the average values of the sub-dimensions were used to assess the level of safety culture. The results revealed that the average safety culture score of workplaces in Korea was 4.33 out of 5.00, indicating a high level. Both safety culture and supervisor safety competence had positive effects on employees' safety behavior, with managerial safety competence showing a moderating effect by strengthening the relationship between safety culture and safety behavior. This study is significant in that it expands the research scope, previously focused on specific industries, to include the manufacturing and service sectors, thereby confirming the causal relationship between organizational safety culture and employees' safety behavior. Additionally, it presents a scale to estimate the safety culture level of workplaces in Korea. Furthermore, the study provides empirical evidence that strengthening supervisor safety competence plays a crucial role in enhancing the effectiveness of organizational safety culture, offering practical implications.