Linking Workplace Safety to Operational Disruptions: A Moderated Mediation Analysis in Commercial Vessels

• Author: Martha R. Grabowski,Adrian S. Choo
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/jbl.12195
• Date: 01 December 2018
• Published date: 01 December 2018

Linking Workplace Safety to Operational Disruptions: A

Moderated Mediation Analysis in Commercial Vessels

Adrian S. Choo

1

and Martha R. Grabowski

2,3

1

Michigan State University

2

Le Moyne College

3

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Little is known about the mechanism of how workplace safety may affect operational disruptions manifested as unplanned maintenance in

commercial vessels. Building upon the high reliability organization theory as a broad framework, we propose that workplace safety climate

influences how employees identify and report errors at work. Specifically, no-blame error reporting mediates the relationship between safety cli-

mate and unplanned maintenance in vessels. Additionally, we posit that the mediation effect varies among vessels in that it is stronger (weaker)

in newer (older) vessels that are easier (harder) to maintain operationally. We test the moderated mediation framework at the vessel level of

analysis using an archival survey data with multiple responses from 1,169 crewmembers in 86 marine vessels. Our results lend support to the

mediation effect in that safety climate facilitates no-blame error reporting, which subsequently reduces the frequency of unplanned maintenance.

In particular, the effect of safety climate on unplanned maintenance is fully mediated by no-blame error reporting. As vessel owners attempt to

maximize their return on investments in aging ships, the mediation effect shows a high level of safety climate in a vessel is indirectly associated

with a significantly lower level of unplanned maintenance rate relative to a similar age vessel but with an average level of safety climate. How-

ever, the mediation effect weakens as a vessel ages. This study contributes to important insights into how safety climate can reduce operational

disruptions (unplanned maintenance events) through error reporting behaviors, contingent upon the age of ocean carriers in logistics companies.

Keywords: workplace safety; safety climate; error reporting; unplanned maintenance

INTRODUCTION

Maritime shipping cannot be overemphasized in international

logistics, transporting over 80% of global trade by volume and

over 70% of international trade by value (UNCTAD 2017). As

the shipping industry is highly capital intensive, asset productiv-

ity is the number one priority. Where significant capital invest-

ments in assets are required for production of goods and

services, maintenance plays a fundamental role in managing

these asset investments (McKone and Weiss 1998; Eruguz et al.

2017). Ship components, such as propulsion systems and engine

machinery, need to be continually monitored and maintained to

ensure the availability of the ship for scheduled voyages in a

timely and efficient manner (Eccles et al. 2010). With an average

commercial value of $16.5 million per ship (UNCTAD 2017),

any shipment delay can result in significant financial loss. Inci-

dents of unplanned maintenance, then, represent unexpected

changes or disruptions to shipping operations because of unantic-

ipated repairs and/or equipment breakdowns that can lead to

safety and/or environmental violations, significant delays, and

high costs in terms of repair and legal issues (Jonsson 2000;

Blackhurst et al. 2011). In this study, unplanned maintenance is

measured based on the number of times in a year a vessel has

nonscheduled unavailability because of the need for maintenance.

Given that seafaring is considered one of the most dangerous

professions in the world (Roberts 2002; Morrison 2016), work-

place safety becomes key to effective shipping operations

(Hetherington et al. 2006; Jin et al. 2012). Although several

studies have examined the impact of workplace safety practices

such as electronic logbooks and safety compliance programs on

safety performance in motor carriers (e.g., Cantor et al. 2009;

Miller 2017; Swartz et al. 2017), the connection between work-

place safety and unplanned maintenance in ocean carriers is rela-

tively understudied. Given that safety incidents are often

correlated with maintenance problems (Reason and Hobbs 2003;

Lind et al. 2008), investigating the link between workplace

safety and unplanned maintenance is particularly important.

In this research, we examine how workplace safety climate is

related to unplanned maintenance at the vessel level of analysis.

Safety climate refers to employee perceptions of the importance

of safety in the work environment (Zohar 1980, 2014; Swartz

et al. 2017). In our context, it is measured by computing the

shared perceptions of crewmembers aboard a vessel about the

importance of safety policies, procedures, and practices in their

ship. Given that policies, procedures, and practices constitute

foundational blocks of the work environment, safety climate cap-

tures “the meaning employees attach to policies, procedures, and

practices they experience and the behaviors being expected and

rewarded”(Zohar 2014, 318). As human errors appear to be

among the principal causes of marine accidents (Talley 1999;

Barsan et al. 2012), we postulate that safety climate influences

how crewmembers identify and report mistakes and failures in

their work processes. As such, we investigate no-blame error

reporting, which refers to the ease of crewmembers in disclosing

failures and mistakes without fear of reprisal. Vessels that take

their crewmembers’safety seriously should be more responsive

to crewmembers reporting errors from their work, which can sub-

sequently lower the frequency of unplanned maintenance events.

As we study the effects of safety climate and no-blame error

reporting on unplanned maintenance, we build upon high

Corresponding author:

Adrian S. Choo, Department of Supply Chain Management, The Eli

Broad School of Business, Michigan State University, 632 Bogue

Street, N330, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA; E-mail: chooadri@

broad.msu.edu

Journal of Business Logistics, 2018, 39(4): 282–298 doi: 10.1111/jbl.12195

© 2018 Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals

reliability organization (HRO) theory (Weick et al. 1999) and

use the theory as an overarching lens to develop and motivate

our theoretical framework. According to HRO theory, organiza-

tions can become highly reliable (in our context, reducing

unplanned maintenance) by creating a work environment that

motivates appropriate behaviors and attitudes (Weick and

Roberts 1993). A culture of safety that involves implementation

of safety practices and policies is necessary to encourage uni-

formly appropriate responses by frontline personnel (Roberts

1990; La Porte 1996). Safety culture, which reflects safety values

and norms in the work environment, can be measured by safety

climate. According to Flin et al. (2000), “safety climate can be

regarded as the surface features of the safety culture discerned

from the workforce’s attitudes and perceptions at a given point

in time. It is a snapshot of the state of safety providing an indi-

cator of the underlying safety culture of a workgroup, plant or

organization”(p. 178). Safety climate, thus, can reflect safety

culture by “direct attention to safety”(Vogus et al. 2010, 63).

We follow this approach in analyzing safety climate (also see,

e.g., Singer et al. 2007; Singer and Vogus 2013).

Under HRO theory, errors have significant implications for

organizational reliability (Reason 2000). A work environment

that effectively emphasizes safety should lead to motivated

employees who are willing to report errors and communicate

their concerns (Vogus et al. 2010). Humans are fallible, and

errors are to be expected. Instead of eliminating and punishing

human errors, HRO theory accounts for inevitable human vari-

ability and emphasizes the importance of being mindful and

being constantly preoccupied with the possibility of failure (Rea-

son 2000). In essence, HROs pursue error coping strategies with

both prevention (safety climate) and containment (no-blame error

reporting) orientations (Sutcliffe 2011). A work environment

with high safety climate can reflect an orientation to prevent

errors from occurring. At the same time, human errors are ubiq-

uitous, and an organization should also develop the capability to

contain and recover from errors through practices that ensure that

employees feel safe to report failures and correct mistakes (Rea-

son 2000). Accordingly, we expect safety climate to influence

no-blame error reporting, which subsequently reduces unplanned

maintenance. Further, as a vessel ages over time, the likely

increase in failure modes in the vessel system should weaken the

effect of error reporting on unplanned maintenance. Thus, we

propose a moderated mediation framework (Figure 1) for our

research.

We test our proposition using an archival survey data set,

where part of the data set has been used in two prior published

papers (Grabowski et al. 2007, 2010). Unlike the two prior stud-

ies that performed pairwise correlations and factor analyses for

safety, the present study examines a new problem about how

safety climate influences nonsafety performance (unplanned

maintenance) through the mechanism of error reporting behav-

iors. By borrowing from HRO theory and combining research in

maintenance, safety climate, and error reporting, our theoretical

approach is distinct from the two prior publications.

Our research fills several gaps in the literature. First, given the

limited research about safety climate in the logistics literature

(Cantor 2008; Swartz et al. 2017), our study is the first to exam-

ine how safety climate can influence unplanned maintenance in

shipping. Building upon the work by Swartz et al. (2017) that

investigated how the influence of safety climate on intention to

leave is mediated by overall job attitudes among truck drivers at

the individual level of analysis, we extend the impact of safety

climate to the group level of analysis by examining how safety

climate affects error reporting and unplanned maintenance among

commercial vessels. In this regard, our research also contributes

to the safety climate literature regarding how safety climate

affects nonsafety performance (unplanned maintenance) in mar-

ine transportation (Zohar 2010). Second, as unplanned mainte-

nance reflects operational disruptions in shipping, investigating

the impacts of unplanned maintenance is critical to advance our

understanding of specific strategies to mitigate disruptions in

ocean carriers (Blackhurst et al. 2011; Macdonald and Corsi

2013). Since disruptions cannot be completely eliminated,

exploring different strategies to reduce the likelihood of disrup-

tions is essential to build a better understanding about developing

resilience in global supply networks (Blackhurst et al. 2011).

Third, building upon a moderated mediation framework, our

research develops a more nuanced understanding of the mecha-

nism (Calantone et al. 2017) about how and why safety climate

can act as an error prevention strategy in reducing operational

disruptions manifested as unplanned maintenance. Our use of

HRO theory as an overarching theoretical lens for our framework

adds to the application of management theories to the logistics

and supply chain literature (Swanson et al. 2017). Fourth,

because we investigate why the mediation effect can become

weaker or stronger in some vessels, our study adds insights into

the boundary conditions (Goldsby et al. 2013) with regard to

maintenance performance to ensure timely and efficient logistics

in highly capital-intensive industries such as shipping and motor

carriers. Note that while individual trucks are not as highly capi-

tal intensive compared to individual vessels, logistics companies

that operate fleets of over hundreds or thousands of trucks may

be considered highly capital intensive. In particular, we demon-

strate how workplace safety not only can improve maintenance

performance but also can extend the useful life of vessels, gener-

ating increased revenue and improved performance for vessel

owners and logistics companies (Jin et al. 2012; Talley 2012).

The following sections are organi zed as follows. First, we

review the background literatur e. Second, we develop hypothe-

ses for the moderated mediation framewo rk (i.e., Figure 1).

Third, we describe the archival sur vey data and the analysis

strategies for analyzing the data, select ing items for constructs,

aggregating to the vessel level, and te sting our hypotheses.

Fourth, we present our results, hypothesis te sts, and robustness

tests. Fifth, we discuss the theoret ical and managerial implica-

tions of our findings. Finally, we con clude our work with a

summary, including limitation s and suggestions for future

research.

Safety

Climate

No-blame Error

Reporting

Unplanned

Maintenance

Vessel Age

+-

++

Figure 1: Theoretical framework.

Linking Workplace Safety to Operational Disruptions 283