ABSTRACT

This chapter reviews safety climate in organizations, particularly small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). Regardless of organizational size, the concepts relevant to understanding safety climate remain the same. Organizational scientists have been studying organizational culture and climate and its influence on workplace accidents for well over a half century. Organizational climate is a related but distinct construct from organizational culture. The distinction between safety culture and safety climate parallels the distinction between organizational culture and organizational climate. Safety climate is a robust predictor of workplace safety and employee safety behaviour. Most of the published scientific literature on safety climate was conducted in large enterprises. It is evident that safety climate affects workplace safety. Fortunately, unsafe incidents are rare phenomena. Statistical analyses and prediction models tend to assume that data are normally distributed. Schneider proposed that organizational founders originate the overall goals and values of the organization, which in turn create the initial organizational processes and structures.