Gil Luria

A Multilevel Model of Safety Climate: Cross-Level Relationships Between Organization and Group-Level Climates

Organizational climates have been investigated separately at organization and subunit levels. This article tests a multilevel model of safety climate, covering both levels of analysis. Results indicate that organization-level and group-level climates are globally aligned, and the effect of organization climate on safety behavior is fully mediated by group climate level. However, the data also revealed meaningful group-level variation in a single organization, attributable to supervisory discretion in implementing formal procedures associated with competing demands like safety versus productivity. Variables that limit supervisory discretion (i.e., organization climate strength and procedural formalization) reduce both between-groups climate variation and within-group variability (i.e., increased group climate strength), although effect sizes were smaller than those associated with cross-level climate relationships. Implications for climate theory are discussed.

Climate as a social-cognitive construction of supervisory safety practices: scripts as proxy of behavior patterns.

Organizational climate research has focused on prediction of organizational outcomes rather than on climate as a social-cognitive mediator between environmental attributes and relevant outcomes. This article presents a model specifying that supervisory safety practices predict (safety) climate level and strength as moderated by leadership quality. Using supervisory scripts as proxy of practices, it is shown that script orientation indicative of safely priority predicted climate level, whereas script simplicity and cross-situational variability predicted climate strength. Transformational leadership mitigated these effects because of closer leader-member relationships. Safety climate partially mediated the relationship between supervisory scripts and injury rate during the 6-month period following climate and script measurement. Theoretical and methodological implications are discussed.

Stressors and resources in customer service roles

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to explore the role of core self‐evaluations (CSE) as a coping resource in customer service roles.Design/methodology/approach – Questionnaires were administered to 265 service providers, measuring CSE, burnout, social stressors involved in interaction with customers (perceived customer negative behaviors and emotional regulation performed by service providers) and coping resources (service orientation and social support).Findings – The results show that CSE is negatively related to service provider burnout as reflected in depersonalization and emotional exhaustion, and positively related to a sense of accomplishment. CSE was also negatively related to perceived customer negative behaviors and to emotional regulation. The results show a partial mediation effect of emotional regulation on the relationship between CSE and burnout. Service orientation and social support were found to interact with CSE and enhance its effect on social stressors.Research limitations/implic...

Employees' Willingness to Report Service Complaints

This article presents the concept of service workers’ willingness to report service complaints (WRC) and examines frontline workers’ discretion about reporting customer complaints in two qualitative studies and a quantitative study. The qualitative studies conceptualize WRC based on a critical incident technique and interviews with service providers and reveal that service providers practice much discretion in their decision to report both informal and formal complaints, weighing cost/ benefit considerations, customer motivation and complaint justification, and numerous organizational and other factors. The quantitative study examines a preliminary WRC scale and its relationship with several correlates and shows that WRC levels are associated with measures of organizational citizenship behavior, service climate, and empowerment. The discussion examines the contribution of the findings regarding WRC to research on service recovery and improving customer satisfaction and presents managerial implications.

Friends in Need: The Protective Effect of Social Relationships Under Low-Safety Climate

Previous studies have explored the role of social relationships, mainly with the supervisor, in promoting a high organizational safety climate. Not much is known, however, about the effect of social relationships when the safety climate is low. This study explored whether high-quality social relationships could compensate for a low level of safety climate. Hypotheses were tested among 673 employees and 46 managers from 46 departments in 11 manufacturing organizations in Israel. Results of both partial least squares and mixed-model procedures showed that employees’ climate perceptions mediate the relationship of supervisors’ climate perceptions with employees’ safety behavior. In addition, employees’ climate perceptions interacted with the quality of relationships with colleagues to affect safety behavior. However, the quality of the relationship with supervisors did not moderate the relationship between supervisors’ and employees’ climate perceptions. The results suggest that high-quality social relationships with colleagues could buffer the effects of low-level safety climate.

The social aspects of safety management: Trust and safety climate

This study tested the contribution of trust between leaders and subordinates to safety. It is suggested that leaders who create a relationship of trust with their subordinates are more likely to create a safe working environment, and to achieve higher and stronger safety-climate perceptions among their subordinates. Hence, trust should be negatively related to injuries and positively related to safety climate. Questionnaires distributed among 2524 soldiers in three army brigades tested for trust and safety-climate variables and were then crossed with injury rate according to medical records at the platoon level of analysis (N=105). Trust was found to be negatively related to injuries and positively related both to level and strength of safety climate. Furthermore, safety-climate level was found to mediate the relationship between trust and injury rates. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Testing safety commitment in organizations through interpretations of safety artifacts

PROBLEM Safety culture relates to injuries and safety incidents in organizations, but is difficult to asses and measure. We describe a preliminary test of assessing an organizations safety culture by examining employee interpretations of organizational safety artifacts (safety signs). METHOD We collected data in three organizations using a new safety culture assessment tool that we label the Safety Artifact Interpretation (SAI) scale; we then crossed these data with safety climate and leadership evaluations. RESULTS SAI were interpreted by employees in accordance with two conceptually distinct themes that are salient in the literature on organizational safety culture: safety compliance and commitment to safety. A significant correlation exists between SAI scores and the organizational safety climate. A similar (though insignificant) relationship was observed between SAI scores and leadership ratings. IMPACT ON INDUSTRY Employee perceptions and interpretations of safety artifacts can facilitate assessments of safety culture and can ultimately lead to understanding of and improvements in the level of organizational safety.

National Culture and Prosocial Behaviors Results From 66 Countries

Numerous studies have attempted to explain prosocial behaviors. Most of these studies focus on individual and contextual factors. Although existing data on the national level have demonstrated significant differences between countries in the frequency of prosocial behaviors, the reasons for these differences have rarely been explored. We hypothesize that Hofstede’s national culture perspective can explain this variance. We applied five societal culture structures to explaining cross-national variations: individualism (IND)–collectivism, power distance (PD), uncertainty avoidance (UA), masculinity, and future orientation (FO). Analysis of data from 66 countries supported our hypotheses: IND correlated positively and PD correlated negatively with prosocial behaviors. Contrary to our hypothesis, UA and FO correlated negatively with prosocial behaviors. Furthermore, PD and UA interact with IND in prediction of prosocial behaviors. We further explored the effect of the cultural dimensions on specific prosocial behaviors separately and found which of them are related to the cultural dimensions.

A computerized multidimensional measurement of mental workload via handwriting analysis

The goal of this study was to test the effect of mental workload on handwriting behavior and to identify characteristics of low versus high mental workload in handwriting. We hypothesized differences between handwriting under three different load conditions and tried to establish a profile that integrated these indicators. Fifty-six participants wrote three numerical progressions of varying difficulty on a digitizer attached to a computer so that we could evaluate their handwriting behavior. Differences were found in temporal, spatial, and angular velocity handwriting measures, but no significant differences were found for pressure measures. Using data reduction, we identified three clusters of handwriting, two of which differentiated well according to the three mental workload conditions. We concluded that handwriting behavior is affected by mental workload and that each measure provides distinct information, so that they present a comprehensive indicator of mental workload.

Detection of Deception Via Handwriting Behaviors Using a Computerized Tool: Toward an Evaluation of Malingering

This paper examines whether a non-intrusive computerized system that analyzes handwriting can detect deception in health care. Health systems are required to deal with false information given by some patients about their health (malingering). Studies have shown that clinical ability to detect deception is limited, and evidence suggests that better results can be achieved by using assessment tools than by relying on human detection. Currently, tools for detecting deception are intrusive and therefore less suitable for the clinician–patient relationship. Within-subject experimental design compared deceptive writing with truthful writing of 98 participants aged 21–36, recruited from the University of Haifa. They wrote true and false sentences about their medical condition on a paper affixed to digitizer that was part of a computerized system. Deceptive and truthful writings for all the subjects were compared. In the next phase, using profile analysis, subjects were divided into three groups according to their handwriting profiles, and the differences between deceptive writing and truthful writing of each profile were analyzed. Deceptive writing was found to be broader and took longer to write than truthful writing. Three distinct profiles were emerged, and significant differences in specific spatial and temporal measures were found for each profile. Preliminary results provide a unique perspective on detecting deception with this computerized tool. Possible applications for the health system and other fields, such as human sorting and internal security, are discussed.