Unsafe acts contribute dominantly to construction accidents, and increasing safety behavior is essential to reduce accidents. Previous research conceptualized safety behavior as an interaction between proximal individual differences (safety knowledge and safety motivation) and distal contextual factors (leadership and safety climate). However, relatively little empirical research has examined this conceptualization in the construction sector. Given the cultural background of the sample, this study makes a slight modification to the conceptualization and views transformational leadership as an antecedent of safety climate. Accordingly, this study establishes a multiple mediator model showing the mechanisms through which transformational leadership translates into safety behavior. The multiple mediator model is estimated by the structural equation modeling (SEM) technique, using individual questionnaire responses from a random sample of construction personnel based in Hong Kong. As hypothesized, transformational leadership has a significant impact on safety climate which is mediated by safety-specific leader–member exchange (LMX), and safety climate in turn impacts safety behavior through safety knowledge. The results suggest that future safety climate interventions should be more effective if supervisors exhibit transformational leadership, encourage construction personnel to voice safety concerns without fear of retaliation, and repeatedly remind them about safety on the job.

The nature of construction projects and their delivery poses immense challenges to the safety of construction practitioners. Historically, attempts to reduce accidents in project settings have gone through three overlapping stages, i.e. the technical age, the human error age, and lately the socio-technical age (Reason, 1993). In the technical age people adopted technical measures to mitigate or prevent hazards and risks in the project environment, while the human error age focused on efforts to avoid malpractices of the person (i.e. project participants) in the project delivery process. However, "virtually all work injuries involve person--environment interactions" (DeJoy, 2005, p. 110). In the socio-technical age, great importance is therefore attached to both the person and environment and their interactions. The notion of safety climate, which is derived from the organizational climate theory and serves as a schema for employees to interpret the environment and adapt behaviors accordingly, is central to accident prevention in the socio-technical age.The central tenet of organizational climate is that, faced with stimuli in the environment, individuals generate perceptions, attach meanings, develop expectations regarding behavior-outcome contingencies and ultimately adapt their behaviors (Moran and Volkwein, 1992;Zohar, 1980). An issue of concern with the organizational climate construct is that it is too general to be meaningful (Schneider and Reichers, 1983). Researchers therefore contend that the organizational climate should

Employees' safety climate perceptions dictate their safety behavior, as individuals act based on their perceptions of reality. Extensive empirical research in applied psychology confirmed this relationship. However, rare efforts have been made to investigate the contributing factors to a favorable safety climate in the construction research. As an initial effort to address the knowledge gap, this paper examines contributing factors to psychological safety climate, an operationalization of safety climate at the individual level and hence the basic element of safety climate at higher levels. A multi-perspective framework of psychological safety climate contributors is estimated by the structural equation modeling technique using individual questionnaire responses from a random sample of construction project personnel. The results inform management of three routes to psychological safety climate: client's proactive involvement in safety management; a workforce-friendly workplace created by the project team;

As a management philosophy, total quality management (TQM) is implemented differently in firms. This study investigates the implementation level and the types of TQM practices adopted in construction companies. Eight elements had been identified from both organizational/management-and construction-related studies to represent the TQM spirit. These elements are top management leadership, customer management, people management, supplier management, quality information management, process management, organizational learning, and continual improvement. A questionnaire survey was conducted to solicit the implementation level of the identified TQM elements. The survey findings indicate that customer, process management, and top management leadership were implemented at a higher level than the remaining elements with quality information management implemented at the lowest level. Important practices that constitute each element were also identified. Based on the findings, we propose a TQM implementation framework for construction companies.

Existing initiatives in the management of construction project safety are largely based on normative compliance and error prevention, a risk management approach. Although advantageous, these approaches are not wholly successful in further lowering accident rates. A major limitation lies with the approaches' lack of emphasis on the social and team processes inherent in construction project settings. We advance the enquiry by invoking the concept of social capital and project organisational processes, and their impacts on project safety performance. Because social capital is a primordial concept and affects project participants' interactions, its impact on project safety performance is hypothesised to be indirect, i.e. the impact of social capital on safety performance is mediated by organisational processes in adaptation and cooperation. A questionnaire survey was conducted within Hong Kong construction industry to test the hypotheses. 376 usable responses were received and used for analyses. The results reveal that, while the structural dimension is not significant, the mediational thesis is generally supported with the cognitive and relational dimensions affecting project participants' adaptation and cooperation, and the latter two processes affect safety performance. However, the cognitive dimension also directly affects safety performance. The implications of these results for project safety management are discussed.