Balancing Safety in Everyday Work: A Case Study of Construction Managers’ Dynamic Safety Practices

The construction industry continues to have one of the highest risks of occupational accidents and injuries, and the fields of occupational safety and safety management have been characterized by an understanding of safety as being in direct competition with other organizational goals and thus applying an ‘either-or’ mindset. This dissertation is based on eight months of ethnographic inspired fieldwork including observations, interviews and documentary data obtained from managers at three construction sites in Denmark. Focus is on the managers’ daily safety practices by exploring how they integrate safety into their daily operational work activities and the tensions they face in their pursuits of attaining competing goals and demands.
Given the constructivist nature of occupational safety, the three studies reported in this dissertation are informed by a process philosophy and practice-oriented thinking. They draw on the existing theoretical concepts of institutional logics, hybrid professionalism and boundary work that provide key insights into occupational safety as a fluid phenomenon that is part of everyday work activities, constructed by the managers themselves. Safety is conceptualized as a complex, emergent, and dynamic aspect of managerial work, and this dissertation demonstrates how the managers approach safety through the ongoing and dynamic balancing of multiple and often competing institutional logics in everyday work.