PATHWAYS TOWARDS SAFETY PERFORMANCE IN MANUFACTURING ORGANIZATIONS: EMPIRICAL EVIDENCES ON MEDIATING ROLE OF SAFETY MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

Safety performance is one of the major issues among manufacturing firms. The emergence of new regulations and international standards regarding safety has forced organizations to improve their safety performance. Based on a review of literature the key antecedents include safety climate (SC) and occupational health and safety management system (OHSMS) impact safety performance. This study aims to investigate the direct and indirect relationships between safety climate (SC), occupational health and safety management system (OHSMS) and safety performance (SP) by bridging research gaps identified in the literature. This study employed a quantitative research design using quantitative data to address the research objectives. The clean data sample of 247 was analysed through structural equation modelling (SEM) using AMOS 24 software. Thus, findings revealed that SC was positively related to SP, while OHSMS partially mediated the relationship between SC and SP. This study also has some limitations as the findings can be generalized only to ISO18001-certified Malaysian manufacturing firms. Future research should replicate this model with a larger sample size and different sectors, regions, or countries to see how the results vary from the current study results.