Creating a safer workplace: A linkage model for labour‒management partnership, psychological safety, collaborative industrial relations climate and organisational occupational and health safety performance

Abstract

This study takes a mutual gains perspective to investigate how a labour‒management partnership (LMP) impacts organisational occupational and health safety (OHS) performance and creates a safe workplace. It develops a model linking employee psychological safety with a collaborative industrial relations (IR) climate and ultimately organisational OHS performance. The research context is China ‒ where LMP is driven by the Party-state in managing labour relations. To test the proposed linkage model, multi-level structural equation modelling is conducted, using matched employer‒employee data from 205 companies and 7229 employees in an industrial park in the Yangtze River Delta. The results support the use of the linkage model, demonstrating that partnership decision-making increases psychological safety, in turn developing a collaborative IR climate, ultimately reducing the number of accidents. This study contributes to partnership research by exploring the underlying mechanisms of how a partnership arising from the logic of neo-pluralism successfully delivers mutual gains for employees and employers in a non-pluralist context. It has wider implications for collaborative management and OHS management in a developing country.