Industrial accidents pose serious threats to workers’ health and safety while also increasing corporate risks and social costs. According to recent statistics by the Ministry of Employment and Labor (2024) and the Korea Occupational Safety and Healt...
Industrial accidents pose serious threats to workers’ health and safety while also increasing corporate risks and social costs. According to recent statistics by the Ministry of Employment and Labor (2024) and the Korea Occupational Safety and Health Agency (2023), approximately 80% of occupational accidents in Korea occur in small workplaces with fewer than 50 employees, highlighting structural vulnerabilities in their safety management capabilities. Consequently, both government and industry have emphasized strengthening not only regulatory compliance but also proactive and autonomous safety culture practices.
Despite these efforts, standardized and validated assessment tools specifically designed for small enterprises remain limited. Existing major tools include the Nordic Safety Climate Questionnaire (NOSACQ-50), which evaluates employees’ perceptions and psychological climate regarding safety (perception-based approach), and the KOSHA-KSCI, which focuses on organizational policies, management systems, and procedural maturity (system-based approach). In this study, the characteristics and theoretical underpinnings of these tools were reviewed and re-interpreted to conceptualize safety culture across perception-based, system-based, and behavior-based dimensions. This classification is not an established taxonomy from prior literature, but a conceptual analytical framework proposed by the researcher, grounded in foundational safety culture theories (e.g., Zohar; Reason; Cooper) and the measurement focus of each instrument.
Based on this theoretical framing, a behavior-based safety culture assessment tool tailored for workplaces with fewer than 50 employees was developed and empirically evaluated. Survey data were collected from 120 workers across construction, machinery assembly, rubber/chemical manufacturing, and service industries. Statistical analyses—including descriptive analysis, reliability testing, exploratory factor analysis, and correlation analysis—were conducted using SPSS.
Results demonstrated that the newly developed tool exhibited strong structural validity across leadership, participation, feedback, and system dimensions, along with excellent internal consistency (Cronbach’s α = .968). These findings indicate that the instrument effectively captures behavioral and implementation-focused aspects of safety culture in small-scale industrial settings.
This study contributes by supplementing existing perception- and system-oriented diagnostic approaches and introducing a behavior-based assessment model that reflects real-world safety practices and active engagement on worksites. The proposed framework and tool offer a practical basis for quantitatively diagnosing safety culture maturity in small enterprises and supporting the establishment of autonomous safety management and accident-prevention strategies.