A Critical Review of Safety Leadership Maturity Model in the Construction Industry

1.1 Background

The construction industry reportedly causes numerous accidents and deaths among workers. Many argued that safety leadership could directly suppress the casualties and disasters in building projects [1-4]. Several factors, namely, safety and proactive leadership, as well as leader commitment, have been identified to improve safety performance in the construction industry [1, 5, 6]. Under the effect of these factors, the organizational focus would shift towards health and safety governance, which reduces the risk of accidents and disasters. Therefore, many organizations and companies strive to realize zero accidents by improving their safety culture [1, 2, 5, 6].

The previous studies reported that employee protection is promoted by governance [7], and the safety culture is entirely mediated through the communication with safety leaders, as well as the daily report and participation of workers [6]. In other words, safety performance is achieved through continuous communication between safety leaders and construction workers.

An assessment tool is needed to evaluate safety leadership. Several publications resorted to maturity models to achieve adequate safety leadership, and detailed their functions and concepts. For instance, Roghabadi & Moselhi [8] developed a maturity model by a fuzzy decision method. The model provides construction organizations with the insights into the capabilities and weaknesses in risk management, as well as several areas for improvement.

The risk management maturity model (RMMM) was hailed as the best to assess risk management, due to its practicality and flexibility in any condition [9]. The model offers a comprehensive maturity scale, showing both positive and negative sides. Orlando et al. [10] designed a maturity model to assess safety maturity, identify management risks, and support internal controls. But the model requires several prior conditions: the organization must have sufficient capability to implement the model.

Through the above analysis, a literature review was conducted on safety leadership, maturity models, and the contribution of project owners, with a special focus on maturity models. The aims of the review are as follows:

1. To better understand the maturity models, and assess the safety leadership, functional features, utilized factors or indices, and application methods, through a critical review;
2. To examine the methodological properties of maturity models in assessing safety performance;
3. To develop a maturity framework for safety leadership assessment in the construction industry.

1.2 Safety leadership maturity

Despite the considerable literature covering safety leadership, there is inadequate agreement on its definition and assessment methodology. Griffin & Hu [11] treated safety leadership as a specific behavior motivating workers to achieve safety goals. Barling et al. [12] defined safety leadership as a multidimensional construct reflecting a value for safety, which is demonstrated by actions and practices promoting workplace safety. The effectiveness of safety leadership can be assessed by several indices: (1) establishing authority between owners; (2) effective collaboration between parties, (3) reducing conflict between parties, (4) enhancing safety awareness of each party, (5) good safety policies and practices by each party, and (6) the consistency and sustainability of safety policy implementations [3].

Zhang et al. [6] observed that group safety is highly mediated by participation, as well as leader-worker communication. This means workers can understand the importance of safety within the workgroup, through adequate communication and information exchange. Moreover, executive leaders must actively engage with workers to achieve organizational goals, and provide them with the keys to achieve safety performance and solve common safety problems. To this end, the leaders need to adopt methods for improving job performance, in association with safety departments and management [1]. Skeepers & Mbohwa [13] argued that safety leadership is the commitment, participation, and behavior affecting the safety performance of workers.

Considerable evidence shows that the leadership influences construction safety. A proactive leader with mature safety features produces less adverse outcomes, such as accidents or deaths [2]. For a construction project, 15% of the cost is incurred by accidents. The elimination of building risks would greatly benefit project owners. According to Grill et al. (2018), immature leaders with passive or avoidant behaviors weaken the safety climate at the construction site [14]. Similar conclusions were drawn by Salamzadeh & Hajiseydjavadi [4], who observed a significant mutual correlation between leadership style and organizational maturity: the organizational attitude towards safety is affected by the maturity of both workers and leaders.

Compared to workers, leaders boast profound knowledge, skills, and attitudes, and exert a huge influence on the safety construction culture. Thus, they are the most appropriate targets for training [15]. A good safety climate spurs the sustainable development of safety. Moreover, workers are unable to promote and perform safety behaviors, without the support from leaders. In fact, the leadership maturity, a sign of the owners’ commitment and internal motivation, is positively correlated with work performance, schedule, and cost [16]. That is, the owners are committed to educating and facilitating project teams and values, as well as improving performance in construction safety.

Every owner should prioritize safety in the pursuit of zero accidents [17]. This means project owners need to make efforts as safety leaders in the construction industry. For example, they ought to get involved in the communication between project parties, select suitable parties, and execute safety measures actively. In addition, the owners must contribute to the communication, evaluation, and improvement of workers’ safety performance throughout the project [1].

3.1 Types of industries

Based on the above criteria for literature query, a total of 31 publications were selected, including 15 academic papers, 5 professional/company reports, 9 conference reports, and 2 university theses. Every publication uses maturity model as the primary tool, and comes from a reliable source. Table 1 provides the details of these publications.

Table 1. Reviewed publications on maturity models

We mainly searched for the publications from 2010 to today. However, several older publications were retained, because they are very relevant to the development and evaluation of the maturity model. In addition, two studies with no publication date were also included for their high relevance. Overall, this critical review covers 4 publications before 2010, 6 between 2020 and 2015, 18 between 2016 and 2020, and 2 in 2021 as shown in Figure 1.

By country/region, the United States has the greatest number of publications. Brazil and the United Kingdom each has 3 publications. One publication comes from Australia, Canada, China, Croatia, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Iran, Malaysia, Nigeria, Portugal, Thailand, and Turkey each.

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Figure 1. The year of publication

In terms of industry, the construction industry has the most publications (11) [2, 5, 22, 35-42]. Eleven publications are general discussions, falling to the category of non-specific [10, 23-32]. Two belong to the petrochemical industry [43, 44]. The remaining two belong to the category of miscellaneous.

3.2 Data collection and evaluation methods

Among the reviewed publications, the most popular data collection methods are the questionnaire survey and literature review, which are adopted in 16 [5, 10, 21, 28, 29, 31, 32, 35, 36, 39, 41-44, 46, 47] and 10 [23-27, 30, 33, 34, 37, 38] publications, respectively. Other methods are preparatory techniques for questionnaire surveys, namely, semi-structured interviews, workshops, and group discussions. Albert et al. [35] collected data through a questionnaire survey, and quantified the data by regression analysis, before developing a maturity model. Maryani et al. [37] developed a safety maturity level by a questionnaire survey and fuzzy methods. Some scholars collected a decent number of relevant studies through literature review [23-26, 33, 37, 38], and often perform a qualitative analysis to build the maturity model. The qualitative analysis extracts the most relevant parts of each publication, and compose them into a finding.

3.3 Type of publication

The reviewed publications could be divided into a development group, and an evaluation group. Overall, 21 reviewed publications focus on the development of the maturity model, while 10 focus on the evaluation of the model (Table 2). The development group has a relatively broad scope, and carries out quantitative and empirical analyses on both specific and non-specific industries. Through qualitative analysis, Kwak & Ibbs [27] provided a perfect example of the maturity model development in a non-specific industry [27]. Meanwhile, the evaluation group typically tackled a specific industry, such as contracted construction [2]. Another example was observed, which primarily focuses on assessing the maturity of a country [28].

Table 2. Type of publications

3.4 Structure and terminology

The maturity models have similar information, albeit the difference in context and industry. Each model in the reviewed publications has the following information: (1) several levels or multiples factors, (2) descriptors of each level or factor, (3) a generic description of the maturity model, and (4) a generic description of each level or factor.

The terminology of the maturity model varies with information structures. It usually provides the industrial context and ultimate goals of the maturity model [18]. Each maturity model can be assessed uniformly, because the critical review requires similar information. The most popular terminology is the leadership maturity model [23]. The other terminologies were developed based on each context, e.g., (i) construction safety maturity model [36], (ii) safety culture maturity model [29], and (iii) health and safety culture maturity model [38]. Factorized maturity models differ slightly in terminology, namely, food safety culture maturity index [48] and Safety Culture [47].

3.5 Safety and leadership-related maturity models

The maturity models in the reviewed publications have various functions, which need to be used in accordance with the specific context. The maturity model levels of safety leadership provide an important reference for maintaining safety performance [19]. In addition, some of the reviewed publications indirectly assessed safety protection and management, providing comprehensive knowledge in the critical review of safety leadership maturity.

Overall, seven [5, 23, 30, 31, 33, 34, 39] and seventeen [2, 10, 24, 25, 28, 29, 32, 35, 36, 38, 40, 42-44, 46-48] publications candidly focused on leadership and safety maturity model, respectively. Therefore, safety culture is the most common topic in explaining the maturity model, e.g., hospital settings [46] and industrial organizations [29]. In this critical review, no publication was found related to the safety maturity of project owners in the construction industry.

3.6 Level descriptors and factors

In the reviewed publications, two kinds of maturity models were used as the primary references, namely, the levelling and factorized methods. The levelling method describe maturity in 3 to 5 levels. The higher the level, the greater the maturity. Meanwhile, the factorized method uses factors or variables to describe the maturity of an object. The object maturity is proportional to the number of factors being satisfied.

Overall, 21 publications adopt the levelling method, with five maturity model levels being mostly utilized [43]. Only a few used 3 or 4 levels of maturity. Meanwhile, the factorized maturity models containing 3, 5, 7, 8, and 9 factors were found in 11 publications [2, 5, 10, 36, 38, 39, 41, 42, 44, 47, 48]. Table 3 summarizes the two types of maturity models.

Table 3. Level descriptors and factors

3.7 Model object

The maturity model has been utilized in various industries. Even in the same industry, the model could be measured by different indices. For example, Skippers & Bell and Stiles [39, 41] took project manager and general construction terms as objects in the building industry, respectively.

Overall, 14 of the reviewed publications have non-specific objects, while other publications emphasize organizational leadership maturity. In the construction industry, the focus is mostly on the contractors and professionals involved in building projects, such as the project manager. However, no publication was found to emphasize on the owners of construction project. Table 4 sums up the objects of the maturity models in the 31 reviewed publications.

Table 4. Objects of maturity models

Table 5 details the 31 reviewed publications.

Table 5. Details of the reviewed publications

This study carries out a critical review on the publications of the maturity model. Several topics were added to complete the model design, i.e., safety leadership and construction project owner. The critical review notices the extensive use of the maturity models in various industries, e.g., petrochemical industry, healthcare, military, government institutions, and construction. A wide range of subjects were covered in the maturity models of the reviewed publications. Approximately 24 of the 31 publications consider multiple safety and leadership factors to evaluate specific or non-specific objects. Different types of maturity models have been applied differently in multiple industries. The levelling and factorized methods are suitable for the organization with low and high business changeability, respectively. Furthermore, the construction industry could be classified in the factorized sector. A high safety risk is generated by the high volatility in the stakeholder-based projects. As a result, the contractors often directly communicate with the construction site, trying to avoid becoming the scapegoat of accidents.

Several previous studies confirmed that project owners also contribute to safety performance [17, 51]. To guarantee the safety performance, project owners should enhance the safety culture of the stakeholders through decent leadership [52]. This helps in providing the term of safety leadership, based on the ways that the project owners ensure safety performance through their leadership. Under the proposed framework, the factorized maturity model is more suitable for assessing the safety leadership of construction project owners.

Based on the above findings, the future studies could further explore the development method of the maturity model. For example, the research team could compare the advantages and disadvantages between qualitative and quantitative analyses, empirical analysis and case study, as well as questionnaire survey and interviews. Since the construction industry offers a myriad of projects, various methods have been well implemented. Hence, more efforts are needed to gain more knowledge of the proposed maturity model.