Institutions and institutional logics in construction safety management: the case of climatic heat stress

We employed a Glaserian grounded theory approach to explore the gap between behavioural safety and its unsatisfactory outcomes. Data were collected through ethnographic studies on the practice of managing heat stress on thirty-six construction sites in Hong Kong and Chonqing in mainland China. Two c...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Jia, Andrea, Rowlinson, S., Loosemore, M., Xu, M., Li, B., Gibb, A.
Format: Journal Article
Published: Routledge 2017
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/59171
_version_ 1848760403928023040
author Jia, Andrea
Rowlinson, S.
Loosemore, M.
Xu, M.
Li, B.
Gibb, A.
author_facet Jia, Andrea
Rowlinson, S.
Loosemore, M.
Xu, M.
Li, B.
Gibb, A.
author_sort Jia, Andrea
building Curtin Institutional Repository
collection Online Access
description We employed a Glaserian grounded theory approach to explore the gap between behavioural safety and its unsatisfactory outcomes. Data were collected through ethnographic studies on the practice of managing heat stress on thirty-six construction sites in Hong Kong and Chonqing in mainland China. Two core concepts, institutions and institutional logics, are generated and defined to explain why safety rules do not necessarily produce safety behaviours. At society level, we explicated two pairs of institutional logics: the religion logics (Confucianism vs. pragmatism) and the market logics (rational market vs. individualism). At project organizational level, two logics of processing safety in production are explicated: a protection logic in the Chongqing context and a production logic in the Hong Kong context. The concepts and sub-concepts are compared to existing business literature for clarification of scopes. Empirical findings of the study suggest safety intervention needs to redirect its focus from promoting safety alone to addressing the institutional logics of the entire organization and its societal context practised by multiple levels of actors. We conclude that safety research would benefit from redirecting its focus of analysis from discourses, interviews or surveys to authenticated cases reconstructed through triangulation of actors’ discourses at multiple levels of an organization, third-party observation, physiological data and objective measurement of the work environment. Methodologically, this paper provides a detailed guidance for conducting grounded theory research with a focus of conceptualization.
first_indexed 2025-11-14T10:15:14Z
format Journal Article
id curtin-20.500.11937-59171
institution Curtin University Malaysia
institution_category Local University
last_indexed 2025-11-14T10:15:14Z
publishDate 2017
publisher Routledge
recordtype eprints
repository_type Digital Repository
spelling curtin-20.500.11937-591712018-03-28T05:34:17Z Institutions and institutional logics in construction safety management: the case of climatic heat stress Jia, Andrea Rowlinson, S. Loosemore, M. Xu, M. Li, B. Gibb, A. We employed a Glaserian grounded theory approach to explore the gap between behavioural safety and its unsatisfactory outcomes. Data were collected through ethnographic studies on the practice of managing heat stress on thirty-six construction sites in Hong Kong and Chonqing in mainland China. Two core concepts, institutions and institutional logics, are generated and defined to explain why safety rules do not necessarily produce safety behaviours. At society level, we explicated two pairs of institutional logics: the religion logics (Confucianism vs. pragmatism) and the market logics (rational market vs. individualism). At project organizational level, two logics of processing safety in production are explicated: a protection logic in the Chongqing context and a production logic in the Hong Kong context. The concepts and sub-concepts are compared to existing business literature for clarification of scopes. Empirical findings of the study suggest safety intervention needs to redirect its focus from promoting safety alone to addressing the institutional logics of the entire organization and its societal context practised by multiple levels of actors. We conclude that safety research would benefit from redirecting its focus of analysis from discourses, interviews or surveys to authenticated cases reconstructed through triangulation of actors’ discourses at multiple levels of an organization, third-party observation, physiological data and objective measurement of the work environment. Methodologically, this paper provides a detailed guidance for conducting grounded theory research with a focus of conceptualization. 2017 Journal Article http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/59171 10.1080/01446193.2017.1296171 Routledge restricted
spellingShingle Jia, Andrea
Rowlinson, S.
Loosemore, M.
Xu, M.
Li, B.
Gibb, A.
Institutions and institutional logics in construction safety management: the case of climatic heat stress
title Institutions and institutional logics in construction safety management: the case of climatic heat stress
title_full Institutions and institutional logics in construction safety management: the case of climatic heat stress
title_fullStr Institutions and institutional logics in construction safety management: the case of climatic heat stress
title_full_unstemmed Institutions and institutional logics in construction safety management: the case of climatic heat stress
title_short Institutions and institutional logics in construction safety management: the case of climatic heat stress
title_sort institutions and institutional logics in construction safety management: the case of climatic heat stress
url http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/59171