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This study examined the relationships between individual psychological, work environment and organizational variables and occupational accidents using structural equation modelling with latent variables. A series of nested explicative models of the relationships between these variables was derived. Data were collected from a wide range of industrial sectors in the Valencia region of Spain using structured interviews. In total, 525 valid questionnaires were completed and these formed the basis for the subsequent analyses. Analysis showed that the model in the series that proposed relationships between all the latent variables provided the best representation of the data. This supported the broad hypothesis that each of the variables has an effect on accidents and also showed that the individual level variables, including safe behaviour and general heath, mediate the indirect effects from the organizational variables. The final model showed that individual safe behaviour is strongly predicted within the model, although it is mainly related to organizational involvement in safety and not directly to perceptions of the physical work environment. An important role is played in the final model by participants' evaluations of organizational involvement in safety and this is consistent with earlier work highlighting the importance of management commitment to, and action on, safety issues. Finally, the model supported the proposal that stress processes mediate the effects of both organizational and environmental variables.

As a model of job design, the demands-control-support model (DCSM) indicates that dynamic processes involving individual agency underpin the effects of job characteristics.Specifically, the DCSM indicates that control and social support facilitate effective coping with work demands. To examine such processes in detail, 32 nuclear design engineers participated in an experience sampling study (no. observations = 456). Findings indicate that enacting problem-focused coping by control and support across situations may be beneficial for affect. Problem-focused coping enacted by control was also related to fewer decisions that bear risks to design safety. Although higher levels of risky decisions were related to consistent use of emotional-approach enacted by control coping across situations, this form of coping used in specific demanding episodes was related to less cognitive error and fewer risky decisions two hours later. Emotional-approach enacted through support in specific episodes had a mixed pattern of relationships with outcomes. Theoretically, the findings indicate the importance of understanding the purpose for which job characteristics are enacted. Practically, the findings indicate the importance of shaping both problem-solving and emotional processes alongside job redesign.

This paper reports one aspect of a large‐scale study of safety culture in 13 companies operating in the manufacturing sector in the UK. The study is based on data collected from three different domains of measurement relevant to the description of safety culture: workplace assessments, a survey of employee attitudes to safety – including questionnaire and interview data – and company accident records. The data described in this paper concern the prediction of perceived commitment to safety from employees' attitudes to safety as reported in a self‐administered questionnaire. Commitment to safety was used as a marker of the strength of the organization's safety culture. The data showed that employees' attitudes to safety could be modelled in terms of three factors: management actions for safety, the quality of safety training and their personal actions for safety. Their attitudes with regards to management actions for safety showed the strongest relationship to commitment to safety. These attitudes also predicted those regarding the quality of safety training and personal actions for safety. Interestingly, the latter were not related to appraisals of commitment to safety.