The relationship between management’s commitment and effective safety and health committees in Malaysia

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to study the relationship between management’s commitment and effective occupational safety and health committees (OSHCs), which are a form of representative employee involvement in Malaysia. Design/methodology/approach Using data from a survey of 231 manufacturing companies in Malaysia, the study empirically examines both passive and active management commitment and its relationships with the perceived effectiveness of OSHCs. Findings Respondents to the survey, who were members of OSHCs, felt that both passive and active management commitments had significant, positive relationships with OSHCs’ perceived effectiveness, with active management commitment having a stronger relationship with the dependent variable – the effectiveness of OSHCs. All three variables were perceived to be at the medium level, with active management commitment recording the lowest mean value. Research limitations/implications The research is limited by the fact that it is cross-sectional. However, this allows its findings to be placed in the context of past research, underpinned by Malaysia’s manufacturing sector and legislative framework. Practical implications This paper provides suggestions for how the perceived effectiveness of OSHCs can be improved in the Malaysian context. Originality/value This study conceptualises management’s commitment in terms of passive and active commitment, given the context of the current legislative framework, and it addresses the relationships between both types of management commitment and the effectiveness of OSHCs, in the heretofore-unexamined Malaysian manufacturing context.

Management commitment and its impact on occupational health and safety improvement: a case of iron, steel and metal manufacturing industries

“…Having this concept, the conceptual framework shown in Figure 1 is developed. The model assumes that organizations that have OHS policy, OHS strategy in their strategic document and implement accordingly are believed to improve the OHS in the workplace (Farouk, 2017). This idea is also supported by previous studies that strong and noticeable commitment from the very top of the organizations shared by all levels of management and employees may have an indispensable effect to achieve a healthy and accident-free workplace (Zohar, 2002;Zohar and Luria, 2003).…”

“…In the data collection, a close-ended questionnaire was designed to collect primary data related to MCs, occupational accidents in ISMMI in Addis Ababa. The questionnaire contains the most workplace accidents and injuries in the metal manufacturing sector collected from different kinds of literature (Australia, 2015;Farouk, 2017;Liu et al, 2015;Tong et al, 2015). The questionnaire was filled by supervisors or managers of the company who have experiences of more than two years and above.…”

“…These practices are considered in this research as MCs. When MCs in an organization are high, risk and diseasecausing factors will be reduced (Clarke and Ward, 2006;Farouk, 2017;Huang et al, 2012;Taderera, 2012), which subsequently reduce the occurrences of risk and disease. Having this concept, the conceptual framework shown in Figure 1 is developed.…”

“…In this regard, the management even needs to give support to reduce job stress (Wickramasinghe, 2012). The five-item scales were adopted from the literature (Farouk, 2017;Kasim et al, 2018;Syamtinningrum et al, 2018), which ranges (from 1 5 strongly disagree to 5 5 strongly agree) were used to measure MCs.…”

How do you change the world? The role of working condition in quest for excellence in quality education: evidence from Bangladesh

“…Management leaders can help workers deal with high levels of work intensity (Chernyak-Hai and Rabenu, 2018;Aktar and Pangil, 2017;Eurofound, 2012). The issue of the working condition has long been of central interest to research on employees' health and safety, as well as employee motivation and performance (Farouk, 2017). In fact, safe working condition is directly and positively linked to the quality of employees' work environment (Lin and Ping, 2016).…”