Relationship between safety and quality in manufacturing companies - Empirical evidence from Finnish manufacturing companies
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School of Business |
Master's thesis
Authors
Date
2020
Department
Major/Subject
Mcode
Degree programme
Information and Service Management (ISM)
Language
en
Pages
68+14
Series
Abstract
Occupational safety and quality are among the most researched concepts in their respective streams of safety and operations management literature. Nevertheless, the interactions between these two constructs are not thoroughly studied. Especially, the connections between safety and quality in operations management literature, with a few notable exceptions, have been overlooked. Occupational safety thus is viewed primarily as a regulatory requirement or to the extreme, as detrimental to the operational productivity of an organization. Nevertheless, recent research suggests that occupational safety could have a positive impact on quality outcomes. There are studies that theoretically link the concept of occupational safety with quality. Nevertheless, the linkages have not been fully established empirically. In this thesis, the linkages between safety and quality is first established and examined theoretically. This thesis investigates the Total Quality Management (TQM) framework with a special focus on the human factor. Subsequently, this thesis studies the impacts of occupational safety on employee performance, especially employee engagement in operations, through motivation literature. This thesis empirically investigates and quantitatively tests the relationship between occupational safety and quality among Finnish manufacturing companies. The concept of occupational safety is measured through the construct of safety disconnect, defined as the difference between management versus worker perceptions of occupational safety. The concept of quality is measured with several performance metrics. The overarching hypothesis is that safety disconnect correlates negatively with quality. The sample consists of twelve manager responses and 163 employee responses from twelve different manufacturing plants around Finland. The results of this study confirm the hypothesis with a statistically significant negative correlation between safety disconnect and external quality. In terms of theoretical contributions, this thesis strengthens the positive correlation between occupational safety and quality. In terms of managerial contributions, this thesis demonstrates that combining quality and safety management is operationally beneficial, as they both aim at a stable production without accidents or quality variations. Additionally, this thesis proposes four ways for integrating safety into quality management: (1) extensive communication between safety and quality management, (2) joint management system, (3) integration of occupational safety into TQM, and (4) implementation of Total Safety Management in TQM environment.Description
Thesis advisor
Kuula, MarkkuTran, Tri
Keywords
quality management, quality leadership, operational excellence, occupational safety, Total Quality Management, Finland