The Impact of Companies' Age on Safety Culture in the Metal Products Industry

Problem statement: Safety culture is a complex structure in an organization that includes values and attitudes, most of which are potentially changeable and related to actual accident behavior. In this study, the components of safety culture included organizational commitment, management involvement, employee empowerment, reporting system and rewarding system. Approach: The numbers of occupational injuries in industries have steadily increased during recent years. The major objectives of this study were to evaluate the safety culture and to analyze the difference in safety culture in the metal products industry in Iran (Guilan province) with regard to companies’ age. Metal products industry was chosen because of the higher occupational injuries rates amongst the industries in Iran. Results: The companies were chosen based on their age. A total of 714 respondents from 14 companies participated in the survey. The method used in this study was a questionnaires quantitative type based on a Lickert scale and the data collected were analyzed statistically. The one-way ANOVA was used to test for significant difference in safety culture in the metal products industry with regard to companies’ age. The results showed that safety culture was not strong based on the mean for average score of 2.58 which was less than 3 compared to the possible maximum of 5. One-way ANOVA analysis revealed that there was a significant difference among safety culture with respect to companies’ age. New companies had stronger safety culture compared to older one. Conclusion: Based on the findings the hypothesis of this study is accepted. This study also indicated that the safety culture in the metal products industry in target population group was not strong however, can be improved through improvement of its five components.