{"title":"The art of role-switching–positioning practices and the relational roles of OSH coordinators in the Danish construction industry","authors":"J. Ajslev, J. L. Møller","doi":"10.1080/01446193.2023.2195195","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The occupational safety and health (OSH) coordinator is an important figure for improving OSH in the construction industry. Working as an OSH coordinator is complicated, and coordinators must attend to many different roles to improve OSH. Recent research has even questioned the effectiveness of OSH professional practice. This points to a need to understand how OSH coordinators position themselves in relation to different roles when performing effective OSH coordination. This study aims to expand upon this question by analyzing how OSH coordinators position themselves in situations leading to the implementation of OSH measures. In the study, practices of OSH coordinators in the Danish construction industry are analyzed by “zooming in” on micro-sociological positioning practices observed during 107 days of ethnographic fieldwork, e.g. speech acts, and by “zooming out” on the links between these positioning practices and the implementation of OSH measures. The study contributes to OSH research and practice in several ways; firstly, the study conceptualizes a typology of practices connected to the relational roles of OSH professionals. Secondly, it expands upon how negotiating for the implementation of OSH measures is a relationally complex matter in which OSH coordinators switch between positioning themselves as alliance builders, authorities, challengers, experts, influencers, and champions. Improving attention and education to accommodate this knowledge may contribute to the creation of more tangible borders around the OSH professional practice, and more impactful OSH practice in terms of implementing measures.","PeriodicalId":51389,"journal":{"name":"Construction Management and Economics","volume":"153 1","pages":"703 - 723"},"PeriodicalIF":3.0000,"publicationDate":"2023-04-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Construction Management and Economics","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1080/01446193.2023.2195195","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"BUSINESS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Abstract The occupational safety and health (OSH) coordinator is an important figure for improving OSH in the construction industry. Working as an OSH coordinator is complicated, and coordinators must attend to many different roles to improve OSH. Recent research has even questioned the effectiveness of OSH professional practice. This points to a need to understand how OSH coordinators position themselves in relation to different roles when performing effective OSH coordination. This study aims to expand upon this question by analyzing how OSH coordinators position themselves in situations leading to the implementation of OSH measures. In the study, practices of OSH coordinators in the Danish construction industry are analyzed by “zooming in” on micro-sociological positioning practices observed during 107 days of ethnographic fieldwork, e.g. speech acts, and by “zooming out” on the links between these positioning practices and the implementation of OSH measures. The study contributes to OSH research and practice in several ways; firstly, the study conceptualizes a typology of practices connected to the relational roles of OSH professionals. Secondly, it expands upon how negotiating for the implementation of OSH measures is a relationally complex matter in which OSH coordinators switch between positioning themselves as alliance builders, authorities, challengers, experts, influencers, and champions. Improving attention and education to accommodate this knowledge may contribute to the creation of more tangible borders around the OSH professional practice, and more impactful OSH practice in terms of implementing measures.
期刊介绍:
Construction Management and Economics publishes high-quality original research concerning the management and economics of activity in the construction industry. Our concern is the production of the built environment. We seek to extend the concept of construction beyond on-site production to include a wide range of value-adding activities and involving coalitions of multiple actors, including clients and users, that evolve over time. We embrace the entire range of construction services provided by the architecture/engineering/construction sector, including design, procurement and through-life management. We welcome papers that demonstrate how the range of diverse academic and professional disciplines enable robust and novel theoretical, methodological and/or empirical insights into the world of construction. Ultimately, our aim is to inform and advance academic debates in the various disciplines that converge on the construction sector as a topic of research. While we expect papers to have strong theoretical positioning, we also seek contributions that offer critical, reflexive accounts on practice. Construction Management & Economics now publishes the following article types: -Research Papers -Notes - offering a comment on a previously published paper or report a new idea, empirical finding or approach. -Book Reviews -Letters - terse, scholarly comments on any aspect of interest to our readership. Commentaries -Obituaries - welcome in relation to significant figures in our field.