Click on “Download PDF” for the PDF version or on the title for the HTML version.


If you are not an ASABE member or if your employer has not arranged for access to the full-text, Click here for options.

Measurement of Worker Perceptions of Trust and Safety Climate in Managers and Supervisors at Commercial Grain Elevators

Published by the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers, St. Joseph, Michigan www.asabe.org

Citation:  Journal of Agricultural Safety and Health. 19(2): 125-134. (doi: 10.13031/jash.19.9977) @2013
Authors:   Gretchen A. Mosher, Nir Keren, Steven A. Freeman, Charles R. Hurburgh
Keywords:   Elevators Management Safety Working conditions.

Abstract. The safety climate of an agricultural workplace may be affected by several things, including the level of trust that workers have in their work group supervisor and organizational management. Safety climate has been used by previous safety researchers as a measure of worker perceptions of the relative importance of safety as compared with other operational goals. Trust has been linked to several positive safety outcomes, particularly in hazardous work environments, but has not been examined relative to safety climate in the perennially hazardous work environment of a commercial grain elevator. In this study, 177 workers at three Midwest grain elevator companies completed online surveys measuring their perceptions of trust and safety at two administrative levels: organizational management and work group supervisors. Positive and significant relationships were noted between trust and safety climate perceptions for organizational managers and for work group supervisors. Results from this research suggest that worker trust in organizational management and work group supervisors has a positive influence on the employees’ perceptions of safety climate at the organizational and work group levels in an agricultural workplace.

(Download PDF)    (Export to EndNotes)