Since fire officials has been doing their role with very high risks such as having to jump into dangerous sites, reducing firefighter accidents is becoming a major theme for policy and research area. Until now, we have been focused on firefighters' ac...
Since fire officials has been doing their role with very high risks such as having to jump into dangerous sites, reducing firefighter accidents is becoming a major theme for policy and research area. Until now, we have been focused on firefighters' accident cases themselves not on safety culture. However, the hazardous behaviors of firefighters are directly related to how much the organization tolerates or encourages dangerous behavior, so a review of the organization's own safety culture is needed.
Existing safety culture studies have shown limitations in categorizing or dealing with sub-factors of safety culture as independent variables. Existing accidents are often caused by excessive operational performance, so it is also necessary to check the relevance of performance orientation and safety culture. Thus, this study positively analyzed the impact of six independent variables on safety culture variable through the mediation variable of performance-orientation . Independent variables are institution, accident experience, external expectation, trust, communication, and risk acceptance.
The average value of safety culture was 3.24 points, which was slightly lower compared to the results of studies on other occupations. However, considering other variables such as external expectation(3.7 points), risk acceptance(3.1 points), and performance orientation(2.89 points), it is still difficult to confirm that the safety culture value of fire organization is low.
ANOVA analysis has significant implications for differences in perception by rank or work experience. It can be interpreted that the risk acceptance and performance orientation of personnel who act as commanders in the field or judge operations in the field are higher. The result is consistent with the results of multiple regression analysis that the higher the risk acceptance, the stronger the performance orientation. It is necessary to closely examine the organizational management method if organizations make burden on field commanders of responsibility for operational target performance or on-site casualties.
The results of reliability and model of SPSS regression and AMOS structural equation model fit are sufficient Among independent variables, institution(-), accident experiences(+), external expectations(+), communication(-), and risk-acceptance(+) have significant impact on performance -orientation. Institution(+) and communication(+), have significant effects on safety culture. The performance orientation has negative impact on the safety culture. The impact of accident experience on performance orientation has shown the opposite results with the hypothesis and existing researches, which requires further consideration.
Based on the results of this study, strategies and policies for the formation of a safety culture are presented, that is also consistent with existing research findings highlighting the importance of safety culture perspective. At the organizational level, because institutional rationality and smooth communication prevent excessive pursuit of performance and promote a safety culture, focusing the basics of organizational management is important to help reduce firefighter accidents. If an organization pursues only outcome-oriented performance, not a process, people would hide or ignore risk factors until an accident really occurs. On the personal level, it is helpful to avoid excessive recognition of public expectations and to identify personal characteristics of risk acceptance and use them for personnel management or education training.
It is also important to periodically monitor firefighting's organizational culture at various levels and feedback to actual policies by experts who majored in firefighting's organizational culture and safety culture.