Making Sense of Industrial Accidents: The Role of Job Satisfaction

The study examined causality attributions made for workplace accidents and how these attributions may be influenced by job satisfaction. It was part of an extensive exploratory work on causal attributions for industrial accidents in Ghana's work environment. It was carried out in a field setting where the participants were actual accident victims (n=121), co-workers (n=117) and supervisors (n=82) at their various workplaces. The results indicated an association between job satisfaction and causality attributions for the accident occurrence. Dissatisfied workers, more than their satisfied colleagues, tend to employ more external attributions in their causal analyses for accident occurrences. This confirmed postulations from job models in which dissatisfied workers have a propensity to attribute to workplace and environmental factors as agents of their dissatisfaction. The findings thus have implications for safety management policies.