Construction Safety Culture and Climate: The Hidden Forces that Shape Safety Performance

Construction site safety is a critical concern in engineering and management, yet construction safety culture and climate continue to be a widely discussed and debated topic. Specifically, their mechanisms and the interrelationships among them have rarely been addressed or explored. Among others, this has resulted in their interchangeable use and subsequent confusion. To address this gap, this study examines the interrelationship between construction safety culture and climate using a recently proposed framework. The framework was built on the principle of shared responsibility and involved four safety organizational levels: upper management, safety personnel, frontline supervisors, and workers. A case study approach was utilized, involving 33 participants from a single construction firm representing all organizational levels, to evaluate the framework and assess the relative importance of each group's contributions to overall safety performance. The findings revealed a cascading effect, where weak safety commitment at higher organizational levels negatively impacts safety performance at lower levels. These hidden forces are often overlooked and not effectively addressed when unsafe actions are observed at lower organizational levels. The proposed framework is expected to offer valuable insights for the industry, enhancing overall site safety management and addressing the ambiguity currently surrounding construction safety culture and climate.