Rita Yi Man Li   Editor Construction Safety: Economics and Informatics Perspectives Construction Safety: Economics and Informatics Perspectives Rita Yi Man Li Editor Construction Safety: Economics and Informatics Perspectives Editor Rita Yi Man Li Sustainable Real Estate Research Center Department of Economics and Finance Hong Kong Shue Yan University Hong Kong, China ISBN 978-981-19-3233-5 ISBN 978-981-19-3234-2 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-3234-2 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 This work is subject to copyright. 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Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore Contents How Does Social Exchange Theory, Perceived Organizational Support and Leader-Member Exchange Affect Construction Practitioners’ Perception on Construction Safety? An Asymmetric Information Approach ............................................. 1 Cho Kei Mak and Rita Yi Man Li An Appraisal of Drivers to Efficient Occupational Health and Safety Performance Management for Small-Scale Contractors in Zambia ........................................................ 27 Mwewa Mambwe, Erastus M. Mwanaumo, Wellington Didibhuku Thwala, and Clinton O. Aigbavboa Rule Based Safety Checking in Scaffolds by Integrating Building Information Modeling (BIM) and Safety Management ................ 51 Aneetha Vilventhan and Subhadarshi Mohapatra A Comparative Study on Scholars’ Perspectives on Factors That Affect Safety Awareness ............................................ 65 Rita Yi Man Li Hazard Awareness in Property Refurbishment Work: An Analysis on Court Case Precedents .......................................... 79 Meilin Ding and Rita Yi Man Li Identification of Workplace Risks and Their Risk Assessment During Transmission Line Construction: A Case Study on Infrastructure Project in Nepal .................................. 95 A. K. Mishra, J. S. Sudarsan, and S. Nithiyanantham Femininizing a Masculinised Industry: From Altering the Demography to Transforming the Logic .......................... 135 Andrea Yunyan Jia v vi Contents Hazard Awareness in Stages of Real Estate Development .............. 153 Rita Yi Man Li and Pak Chuen Leung Demystifying the Recent Trends and Advances in Safety Culture Research: A Systematic Review ..................................... 165 M. D. Deepak and Gangadhar Mahesh Developing Safety Capabilities in Integrated Project Delivery: Mobilising the Institutional Analysis and Development Framework .... 183 Andrea Yunyan Jia How Does Social Exchange Theory, Perceived Organizational Support and Leader-Member Exchange Affect Construction Practitioners’ Perception on Construction Safety? An Asymmetric Information Approach Cho Kei Mak and Rita Yi Man Li Abstract In this chapter, we conducted a survey on various stakeholders’ percep- tions of Social Exchange Theory, Perceived Organizational Support and Exchange’s impact on construction safety. Many safety & environmental officers consider favourable job conditions the most crucial factor and then social rewards and morality. As per engineers, surveyors, and managers, group safety climate is the most crit- ical sub-criteria in construction safety enhancement. Favourable job conditions ranked second. However, frontline workers considered leader-member exchange a critical factor different from safety officers & environmental officers. Engineers, surveyors and managers considered the essential criteria was perceived organisa- tional support. The most crucial sub-criteria of “Front-line Workers” is group safety climate, followed by “Loyalty and Compliance of specific social goals”. · Keywords Social exchange theory Perceived organisational support and · · · leader-member exchange Construction safety Asymmetric information Hong Kong 1 Introduction Constructions accidents on sites cause many injuries and mortality annually. Much money was spent on compensation each year. One leading cause of accidents was asymmetric information (Li & Poon, 2009) which suggested that one party has more C. K. Mak Department of Economics and Finance, Hong Kong Shue Yan University, Hong Kong, China B R. Y. M. Li ( ) Sustainable Real Estate Research Center, Department of Economics and Finance, Hong Kong Shue Yan University, Hong Kong, China e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 1 R. Y. M. Li (ed.), Construction Safety: Economics and Informatics Perspectives, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-3234-2_1 2 C.K.MakandR.Y.M.Li or superior information than another (Xiang et al., 2012). Information asymmetry in construction project management lowered the effectiveness of decision making (Xiang et al., 2012). The risk arising from asymmetric information often happens due to poor decision-making (Xiang et al., 2012). Migrant workers who can only speak their dialects and cannot communicate well with other members on-site usually have higher accidental rates. (Debrah & Ofori, 2001). An important issue of Asymmetric Information in site safety management is the principal-agent problem (Xiang et al., 2015). The safety performance of the construction projects could be enhanced if the client and project manager collaborate and share timely safety knowledge. Turner and Muller (2003) revealed that the owner has a principal-agent relationship with the contractor. One of the important issues of the principal-agent relationship is an incentive. The principal-agent problem happens due to conflicting interests between principals and agents. Thus, how to maximise the incentive mechanism is the recipe for the success of lowering the risks of safety in a construction project (Xiang et al., 2015). Dynamic project management based on the principal-agent model suggests that any changes in the principal participants’ behaviour can alleviate the problem of information asymmetry in project safety management (Verma & Terpenny, 2005). Huai and Wang (2004) focused on asymmetric information between the owner and the supervisor. In the bidding stage, the information advantages of supervisors included financial position, the number of employees and their quality, etc. In the real estate market, developers aim at higher profit margins with the help of informa- tion advantage (Xiang et al., 2015). In the contract implementation, the contractor may maximise his interests through improper and unethical means like reducing the investment in safety measures to lower the cost and get more profits. Owners would only consider the money they can earn but ignore the details of implementation procedures. If there are any accidents on the construction sites due to malpractice, however, they must bear the responsibility. 2 Social Exchange Theory (SET) When individuals provide valued services to others, others need to respond and provide the desired services (Blau, 1964). Practitioners and organisations make deci- sions to maximise their benefits and minimise costs. Individuals expect reciprocal benefits when they engage in works like success and trust (Zhang & Jia, 2010). Hence, interpersonal interactions are a form of exchange where actors benefit from their actions (Shiau & Luo, 2012). Under the lens of social exchange, employees who perceive the organisational environment as a kind of support feel responsible for reciprocating the beneficial behaviours to their organisation. HowDoesSocialExchangeTheory,PerceivedOrganizationalSupport… 3 Social Exchange Theory suggested that there are three significant forms of exchange in our society (a) rules and norms of exchange, (b) resources exchanged, and (c) relationships between the supervisors and subordinates (Cropanzano & Mitchell, 2005). Reciprocity has been a critical concept considering social exchange theory which refers to the two-way relationship, mutually gratifying pattern of goods and services exchange (Gouldner, 1960). The social exchange theory and the reciprocity nature of organisations have been explained in the previous study (Eisenberger et al., 1990; Mearns et al., 2010). After one party or person receives benefits, others feel that there is an obliga- tion to compensate through effort (Mustapha et al., 2011). If the other reciprocates with a return of something like rewards, more rounds of exchanges will become possible (Zhang & Ng, 2012). The idea is like an n-round game theory where partic- ipants’ behaviours in the first round will affect others later (Li, 2011; Li & Poon, 2011). Hence, Social Exchange Theory is characterised as the reciprocal relation- ship in which our actions will affect others (Zhang & Ng, 2012). Previous studies applied social exchange theory in safety climate research (Dejoy et al., 2010). The more the management commitment to workplace safety, the more enthusiastic the employees are to react when they perceive more significant social and organisational support for safety at work. Theoretical reviews and empirical findings have discov- ered the connection between safety climate perceptions and management commit- ment to safety. Social exchange theory applies economic and individual psycholog- ical principles to bilateral relationships form social exchange relationships with their organisations (Blau, 1964; Emerson, 1976; Homans, 1958; Zagenczyk et al., 2010). The current study based on the social exchange theory signified that employees who work in a company with a favourable safety climate are more prone to perceive commitment to and better support safety and health protection (Huang et al., 2016). There is a higher chance for the employees on sites to reciprocate with safer behaviours to reduce accidents and injuries (Hofmann et al., 2003). Apart from greater motivation to work safely, a good safety climate can also lead to other positive outcomes, like higher job satisfaction, morality, and commitment to both organisation and society (Huang et al., 2016). 3 Cost-And-Benefit Relationship of Safety Climate Social Exchange Theory explains reactions, either real or perceived, to be weighed against each other to predict a final action (Groth & Vogt, 2014). For example, human attitudes are determined by cost–benefit analysis. They would like to choose the alternative with higher gains to them. An increase in perceived benefits of adopting construction safety measures will increase the likelihood of adopting them. 4 C.K.MakandR.Y.M.Li Besides, according to the motivation theory, motivation is the incentive of an individual to act or not to act. From the perspective of psychobiological, perceptions of positive or negative phenomena stimulate an individual’s behaviour (Moody & Pesut, 2006). It is the values that determine how humans behave in achieving their goals. On the other hand, incentive theory emphasises how external stimuli affect people (Weiten, 1992). While motivation stimulates independent variables by a person’s favourite incentive (John Isaac Mwita, 2000), one’s behaviour depends on his expectations of benefits and costs (Greer & Downey, 1982). In this case, rewards and punishments are detrimental to construction safety behaviour for construction projects. Any external stimuli programmes, i.e. rewards or penalties, significantly affect the workers’ safety on sites as they would calculate the gains and losses of whether to adopt the safety measures. According to social exchange theory, if the organisations offer benefits to improve construction safety measures and the benefits exceed the costs, construction workers will take safety actions. For example, if the benefits of training exceed costs, they will spend more time receiving training. 4 Relationships Between Safety Climate and Job Satisfaction, and Morality Job satisfaction affects a specific job attitude of an individual (Judge & Kammeyer- Mueller, 2012). The relationship between safety climate perceptions and job satisfac- tion was assessed, and concluded that workers’ perceptions of safety climate in their working environment positively stem from employees’ job satisfaction (Morrow & Crum, 1998). It also revealed that individuals’ safety climate perceptions directly relate to employee job satisfaction (Clarke, 2010). Positive safety climate percep- tion would be a basic need for safety at work as it might result in employees’ positive feelings toward their jobs. Morality can also be beneficial to achieving a better safety climate on sites. This is in line with Maslow’s theory, which suggested that satisfaction is built up from the bulwark of how well the job can satisfy the basic needs of the workers, such as safety (Maslow, 1954). Moreover, as mentioned before, employees with positive safety climate perceptions are prone to perceive support as a favourable treatment to their well-being. (Brambilla et al., 2013). 5 Relationships Between Safety Climate and Morality Organisations’ ethics affect various stakeholders, including the public, stockholders, other businesses, and employees. When it comes to contractual business, ethicists