Leadership improvement and its impact on workplace safety in construction projects: A conceptual model and action research

Leadership is proven as a key factor impacting safety while researchers and practitioners are fostering proactive approaches to preventing workplace injuries. Practitioners' lack of leadership is one of the major causes for the continuous high-level accident frequency within the construction projects. An important yet still unsettled academic issue is how leadership impacts safety performance of construction projects, and how safety leadership can be improved. In order to probe into the mechanism by which leadership improves project safety, this study develops a safety leadership model for construction projects (SLMCP) in both theoretical and pragmatic perspectives. Theoretically, this model incorporates specific characteristics of construction projects and applies a multiple levels-of-management perspective to depict leadership's cascading influences across project stakeholders. Safety culture and safety management are the two major paths by which leadership impacts safety performance. Pragmatically, the action research (AR) method is used to validate the theoretical model empirically and develop feasible measures to implement safety leadership in practice. A five-round longitudinal evaluation confirmed in a case study the validity of SLMCP and the effectiveness of safety leadership improvement measures. This paper contributes to the body of knowledge by clearly depicting safety leadership's cascading top-down influencing mechanism in construction projects and providing concrete and validated measures for leadership improvement. The AR based intervention also establishes a general procedure for leadership promotion in practice. Conclusions of the paper serve as novel ideas and methods for workplace safety improvement in construction projects.