Post on 10-Mar-2020
Safety Culture, Moral Disengagement, and AccidentUnderreporting
Laura Petitta1 • Tahira M. Probst2 • Claudio Barbaranelli1
Received: 29 October 2014 /Accepted: 13 May 2015 / Published online: 28 May 2015
� Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2015
Abstract Moral disengagement (MD) is the process by
which individuals mitigate the consequences of their own
violations of moral standards. Although MD is understood
to be co-determined by culture norms, no study has yet
explored the extent to which MD applied to safety at work
(JS-MD) fosters safety violations (e.g., accident underre-
porting), nor the role of organizational culture as a pre-
dictor of JS-MD. The current study seeks to address this
gap in the literature by examining individual- (MD) and
organizational-level (culture) factors that explain why
employees fail to report workplace accidents. We tested a
latent variable structural model positing organizational
culture typologies (autocratic, bureaucratic, clan-patron-
age, technocratic, and cooperative) as predictors of JS-MD,
which in turn is expected to mediate the relationship with
accident underreporting. Using data from 1033 employees
in 28 Italian organizations, findings suggest that bureau-
cratic safety culture was related to lower levels of JS-MD,
whereas technocratic safety culture was related to greater
JS-MD. In turn, JS-MD positively predicted employee
accident underreporting and fully mediated the relationship
between culture and underreporting. Theoretical and
practical implications are discussed in light of the
increasing focus on underreporting as well as the adverse
individual and organizational consequences of failing to
report workplace accidents.
Keywords Accident underreporting � Moral
disengagement � Organizational safety culture
Safety Culture, Moral Disengagement,and Accident Underreporting
National surveillance statistics in Italy (INAIL 2011)
indicate that approximately 400,000 workers are injured
each year, representing a rate of 3.7 cases for every 100
full-time equivalent (FTE) workers. Not only are the eco-
nomic costs of such workplace accidents high—accounting
for 2.8 % of the Gross Domestic Product (Eurispes 2010),
but clearly there are steep psychosocial costs as well
(Boden et al. 2001). However, an increasing body of lit-
erature suggests that these national statistics may be large
underestimates of the true prevalence of workplace injuries
and accidents due to organizational- and individual-level
underreporting of workplace accidents. Organizational ac-
cident underreporting occurs when an organization fails to
report injuries occurring at work to national regulatory
authorities (i.e., organizational underreporting), whereas
individual accident underreporting occurs when an em-
ployee fails to report work injuries to his/her employer
(i.e., individual underreporting).
Accident underreporting represents a serious individual,
organizational, and public health concern for a number of
reasons. For the individual employee, failure to report an
accident often results in the worker’s injury going untreated.
From the perspective of the employer, underreporting can
& Laura Petitta
laura.petitta@uniroma1.it
Tahira M. Probst
probst@vancouver.wsu.edu
Claudio Barbaranelli
claudio.barbaranelli@uniroma1.it
1 Department of Psychology, Sapienza University of Rome,
Via dei Marsi, 78, 00185 Rome, Italy
2 Washington State University Vancouver, 14204 NE Salmon
Creek Avenue, Vancouver, WA 98686-9600, USA
123
J Bus Ethics (2017) 141:489–504
DOI 10.1007/s10551-015-2694-1
leave the root causes of employee accidents unaddressed and
unfixed possibly to crop up again in the future and affect
other employees. From a public health perspective, inaccu-
rate accident reporting undermines national surveillance
statistics and policy efforts to develop safer and healthier
workplaces.
Unfortunately, research suggests that a large majority
of experienced workplace accidents go unreported with
estimates of individual underreporting ranging from
71 % (Probst and Estrada 2010) to 80 % (Probst and
Graso 2013). While much of the prior research
documenting the phenomenon of underreporting has oc-
curred within the United States (e.g., Boden and Ozonoff
2008; Rosenman et al. 2006), recent research indicates
that individual-level underreporting is a prevalent issue
in Italy as well (Probst et al. 2013). Using two different
measures of individual-level underreporting, Probst et al.
(2013) found consistent results suggesting between 57
and 76 % of experienced workplace accidents went un-
reported in a sample of 563 employees drawn from 20
Italian organizations in a wide variety of high risk in-
dustrial sectors. Together, these studies suggest that
(a) underreporting is a commonplace occurrence among
employees who experience an accident at work, and
(b) (rightly or wrongly) employees perceive that non-
reporting is preferable to reporting.
As a result, a growing body of literature has been in-
vestigating psychosocial and organizational predictors of
such underreporting in an effort to increase the accuracy of
injury statistics (e.g., Probst et al. 2008; Probst and Estrada
2010; Probst and Graso 2013). From those studies, a num-
ber of person- and organizational-level factors appear to
partially explain why employees avoid reporting the in-
juries they experience (i.e., why individual-level underre-
porting occurs). These include variables such as
organizational safety climate (Probst and Estrada 2010),
perceived production pressure (Probst and Graso 2011), and
job insecurity (Probst et al. 2013). While the phenomenon
of underreporting has received a great deal of attention in
the United States (e.g., Pransky et al. 1999), Canada
(Shannon and Lowe 2002), and Australia (Quinlan and
Mayhew 1999), it has received less attention elsewhere.
With respect to Italy, several recent studies have investi-
gated the prevalence of occupational injuries in this coun-
try, yet little systematic research has been conducted on the
individual and organizational factors related to such injuries
(Fabiano et al. 2001, 2008) and the extent to which they are
reported.
The purpose of the current research was to add to this
knowledge base by examining the role of moral disen-
gagement (i.e., an individual-level factor) and organiza-
tional culture (i.e., an organizational-level factor) as
predictors of employee accident underreporting. Because
moral disengagement explains psychosocial mechanisms
by which individuals mitigate the moral consequences of
their misconduct (Bandura 1990), we assert that it may
operate as an important variable explaining why em-
ployees may choose to not report an experienced acci-
dent, despite such reporting often being mandatory
according to organizational policies and failure to report
can result in harm to oneself as well as one’s coworkers.
We also argue that it is important to place the occurrence
of moral disengagement within the context of the orga-
nizational culture, given that moral disengagement
mechanisms are internalized during organizational so-
cialization processes and co-determined by culture norms
(Bandura 2002; Bandura et al. 1996). Moreover, given
our focus on deviant behavior applied to the safety con-
text (i.e., failure to report an accident), we examine or-
ganizational culture norms regarding safety (i.e., safety
culture) as predictors of employee MD and subsequent
underreporting.
Using Rest’s (1986) model of ethical decision making as
a framework (see also Jones 1991), ethical safety behavior
requires first a recognition (i.e., moral awareness) by em-
ployees that their decision to report an accident has the
potential to help or harm others and that they have volition
in making the decision to report. We would argue that this
necessary but insufficient condition is typically met, given
the mandatory nature of safety reporting in organizations
and the fact that unreported accidents can increase the
likelihood that other employees may encounter the same
workplace hazards. Once moral awareness has been
established, employees next make an ethical judgment to
determine whether the ethical course of action (i.e., re-
porting the accident) is the appropriate next step. If yes,
then ethical intent is established and the likelihood of ac-
tually engaging in accident reporting behavior increases.
We argue that this ethical decision making process can
be short-circuited during the second (i.e., ethical judgment)
phase by the use of MD strategies. In addition, we contend
that organizational safety culture influences the extent to
which MD by employees occurs. Although MD has been
studied extensively in the social psychology realm, it has
received relatively scant attention from the business ethics
community (see Barsky 2011; Fida et al. 2014, in JBE for
recent exceptions). In particular, Barsky and others (e.g.,
Trevino 1986) argue that research on ethical decision
making and MD needs to emphasize to a greater extent the
interaction between the person and the situation (i.e., the
organizational context, including organizational culture) as
a cause of MD behavior. Thus, we believe that our study
contributes to the literature by a) showing that certain or-
ganizational safety culture types are predictive of MD
among employees, and b) this MD is related to greater
levels of underreporting among employees.
490 L. Petitta et al.
123
Prior research (Bandura et al. 2000) has shown that MD
strategies have been used to justify corporate-level safety
transgressions (e.g., insisting upon the safety of the Pinto
long after it was known to be unsafe). However, this is the
first study to demonstrate how organizational-level safety
culture can activate MD among individual employees and
subsequent accident underreporting. By examining the
conjoint influence of both individual- and organizational-
level factors that potentially contribute to such underre-
porting, we seek to gain a more complete understanding of
the reasons why employees avoid reporting experienced
injuries at work and to provide managerial suggestions on
how to encourage more accurate accident reporting in the
future.
We begin by briefly reviewing the literature on moral
disengagement, defining accident underreporting, and de-
lineating theory-based arguments regarding the relationship
between the two constructs. In particular, our review of the
literature on moral disengagement will focus on the con-
ceptual and empirical contributions pertaining to the work
setting and safety. Next, we discuss the theoretical con-
struct of organizational culture and apply a model of cul-
ture typologies to safety. We also develop hypotheses
regarding organizational culture as a predictor of moral
disengagement and accident underreporting.
A Review of Moral Disengagement and itsRelevance to Workplace Safety
Moral disengagement (MD) was first introduced by Ban-
dura (1990) to explain the psychosocial mechanisms by
which individuals mitigate the moral consequences of
damaging behaviors. Such mechanisms allow people to
disengage from moral self-sanctions associated with mis-
behavior, thus acting without feeling obliged to any kind of
reparation in spite of the individuals’ moral standards that
would normally serve to guide human conduct. Social
cognitive theory postulates an agentic role of the indi-
viduals in self-regulating their conduct. That is, people
develop self-regulatory functions in accordance with their
moral standards that ensue from the anticipatory positive
and negative self-reactions to different courses of actions
they pursue. In particular, such internal control allows the
individual to selectively disengage self-sanctions when
enacting damaging/detrimental behaviors. The four major
points in the self-regulatory system at which internal moral
control can be disengaged from detrimental conduct are (1)
re-construing the conduct, (2) obscuring personal causal
agency, (3) disregarding the injurious consequences of
one’s actions, and (4) vilifying the recipients of one’s
misbehavior by blaming and devaluating them. Overall,
MD neutralizes damaging conduct through eight different
psychological mechanisms, differently belonging to these
four major points. Briefly, cognitive reconstrual occurs
when the individuals redefine the detrimental conduct as
socially valuable and acceptable (moral justification);
when they compare their behaviors with more reprehensi-
ble actions (advantageous comparison); and/or when they
use convoluted verbiage to confer a respectable status to
reprehensible activities (euphemistic labeling). Obscuring
personal agency operates by attributing to others the
pressure to enact detrimental behavior (displacement of
responsibility), and/or by holding others around as re-
sponsible for damaging actions (diffusion of responsibility).
Disregarding the harmful consequences of one’s actions
refers to minimizing, and/or ignoring, and/or distorting the
damaging effects of one’s actions. Finally, vilifying the
recipients refers to divesting people of human qualities in
order to exonerate oneself from damaging others (dehu-
manization); and/or to attributing others provocative con-
duct thus justifying the inevitable harming reaction
(attribution of blame).
Although much of the work on MD has demonstrated
that MD may lower inhibition and is strongly associated
with several manifestations of aggressive behavior as well
as other forms of deviant conduct within the context of
decision making, family abuse, criminal pursuits, and
military and political settings (e.g., Aquino et al. 2007;
Bandura 2002; Bandura et al. 1996, 2001; Mayer et al.
2009), there have been a limited number of studies that
have investigated MD mechanisms within organizational
contexts. For example, MD has been found to be used at
the corporate level in order to neutralize organizational
responsibility for transgressive actions (Bandura et al.
2000; White et al. 2009). Of note, this stream of research
provided empirical support for the majority of the eight
MD mechanisms, but not all of them (e.g., diffusion of
responsibility did not emerge), although the investigation
was conducted at the organizational-level and targeted
corporate units/departments, rather than individual em-
ployees. The study of MD practices at the individual-level
has included research on general unethical behavior toward
others at work (Barsky 2011; Moore et al. 2012), as well as
other more specific instances of misconduct or unethical
behaviors. For example, recent research (Fida et al. 2014)
has examined the role of MD in self-exoneration for ap-
propriating the work of a colleague, justifying leaving work
without permission, and predicting counterproductive work
behaviors toward others (e.g., stealing something belong-
ing to another or insulting someone) or the organization
(e.g., purposely doing work incorrectly).
To our knowledge, the only study on MD specifically
applied to safety-related violations was conducted by Bar-
baranelli and Perna (2004). In particular, the authors de-
veloped a MD measure in order to assess the applicability of
Safety Culture, Moral Disengagement, and Accident Underreporting 491
123
MD mechanisms in relation to safety norms within the
workplace. Their research initially consisted of a pilot study
on 400 subjects who were administered 14 open-ended
questions exploring how they would behave in response to
specific safety risks and dangers. Consistent with prior re-
search (White et al. 2009), the content analysis identified
only six out the eight theorized mechanisms of MD
(specifically, moral justification; advantageous comparison;
displacement of responsibility; diffusion of responsibility;
distorting consequences; and attribution of blame). Their
second study provided evidence of the validity of a single
factor 30-item job safety MD (JS-MD) scale, which included
all the six mechanisms identified in the pilot study.
Given the demonstrated applicability of MD to the
workplace safety context, we next introduce the concept of
accident underreporting and explore the potential role of
MD in explaining why employees may fail to report acci-
dents they experience at work.
Accident Underreporting at Work and the Roleof Moral Disengagement
As alluded to earlier, accident underreporting at the indi-
vidual-level involves a comparison between the number of
experienced workplace accidents and the number of those
experienced workplace accidents that are actually reported
to the employer. As the discrepancy between the number of
reported and experienced accidents increases, underre-
porting can be said to increase (Probst and Graso 2011).
Thus, it is important to take into account the overall
number of experienced accidents relative to the number
reported, since both variables provide important informa-
tion regarding the employee’s workplace safety outcomes.
Probst and Graso (2011) also proposed that Behavioral
Reasoning Theory (BRT; Westaby 2005) might serve as a
useful theoretical framework for understanding how and
why individuals choose to underreport accidents at work.
Drawing upon behavioral intention theories (e.g., theory of
planned behavior; Ajzen 1991), BRT predicts behavior
based upon individual attitudes toward the behavior itself,
subjective norms (i.e., social pressure), and perceived
control (i.e., the ease/difficulty of enacting) over the be-
havior, but further expands upon such theories by incor-
porating context-specific reasons for and against specific
behaviors into the model. Westaby (2005) defined reasons
as ‘‘the specific subjective factors people use to explain
their anticipated behavior’’ (p. 100). According to BRT,
reasons serve as influential drivers of human behavior,
because they help people satisfy their needs to justify,
defend, and understand their behavioral decisions (Wes-
taby et al. 2010).
At the individual-level, there are many reasons proposed
as to why accidents may be underreported at work (e.g.,
fear of reprisals or loss of benefits, Webb et al. 1989;
Sinclair and Tetrick 2004). In a systematic examination of
reasons for not reporting, Probst and Estrada (2010) found
several common employee rationales that could be
indicative of MD mechanisms at work, i.e., reasons for
underreporting that serve to justify their non-compliance
with reporting requirements. In their study, over half of
employees who engaged in underreporting said they did
not think anything would be done to fix the problem; nearly
half (47.5 %) indicated they did not think it was that im-
portant. Both of these could be viewed as strategies to
weaken self-sanction by disregarding and minimizing the
consequences of actions that breach safety reporting re-
quirements. Employees also indicated not reporting acci-
dents because they did not want to be the one to break the
company’s safety record or adversely affect their work-
group’s safety performance. These latter two rationales
could be seen as attempts at cognitive reconstrual by re-
defining the detrimental conduct (underreporting) as so-
cially valuable (moral justification). Such self-deterrents
suppress the sense of guilt associated with violations
(Bandura 2002) and allow an individual to engage in
maladaptive safety behaviors.
In a study of copper miners, Probst and Graso (2013)
found that perceived organizational production pressure
was related to negative reporting attitudes and greater ac-
cident underreporting. Although they did not explicitly
examine MD as an explanatory mechanism for such un-
derreporting, it is possible that excessive production pres-
sure from the organization could lead to diffusion or
displacement of responsibility, i.e., ‘‘If my company cares
more about production than about my safety, why should I
care about accurate reporting?’’
Finally, in a two-country study, Probst et al. (2013)
found that perceived job insecurity was related not only to
increased numbers of experienced accidents, but also a
greater failure to accurately report those accidents. In their
discussion, they suggested that ‘‘employees may have a
stake in maintaining a safe image at work even as their
workplace experience of accidents and injuries increases as
a function of job insecurity’’ (p. 398). Again, while MD
was not specifically measured in that study, their results
indicated that employees were motivated to underreport in
an effort to retain their job, suggesting cognitive recon-
strual via advantageous comparison may be at work to
rationalize the underreporting (i.e., ‘‘Hiding an accident
may be wrong, but potentially losing my job would be
worse’’).
Based on moral disengagement theory and these prior
empirical results, we expect to find:
492 L. Petitta et al.
123
Hypothesis 1 Job safety moral disengagement will be
positively related to higher accident underreporting in the
workplace.
Organizational Culture as a Contextual Influenceon Moral Disengagement and AccidentUnderreporting
According to social cognitive theory, MD mechanisms are
internalized during the socialization processes that regulate
moral standards of an individual. As such, MD is embed-
ded within and co-determined by cultural norms (Bandura
2002; Bandura et al. 1996). Organizational culture refers to
the members’ shared perceptions (Clarke 1999) of a com-
bination of widespread norms, values, beliefs and as-
sumptions that ‘‘tie’’ together individuals belonging to the
same context (Schein 1985). Organizational culture helps
individuals make sense of their work world and represents
a core group of shared set of assumptions, norms, and
patterns of behavior which orient organizational action.
Therefore, the culture of an organization is expected to
predict and explain how employees internalize organiza-
tional shared norms and how MD mechanisms develop at
the workplace. While organizations often have a prevailing
dominant culture (Rousseau and Fried 2001), there are also
numerous more specific dimensions of organizational cul-
ture related to characteristics such as decision making,
communication modalities, error management, and the
like. Because our interest is specifically in predicting ac-
cident underreporting, we focus on organizational safety
culture, i.e., attitudes, behaviors, values, and beliefs about
safety norms and regulations shared among organizational
members. Because organizational safety culture falls
within the larger concept of organizational culture, before
delving into the specific conceptual and operational fea-
tures of safety culture investigated in the present study, we
first introduce the theoretical frame that we used as a ref-
erence for organizational culture.
Our conceptualization of safety culture is based on a
combined typing and profiling conceptualization of orga-
nizational culture proposed by Petitta et al. (2014).
Specifically, this theoretical definition of culture was de-
veloped in line with (a) Enriquez’s (1970) identification of
a typology of organizational culture (i.e., autocratic, bu-
reaucratic, clan-patronage, technocratic, and cooperative);
(b) Schein’s (1985) model incorporating three embedded
levels of culture expression, ranging from the most visible
and external layer of organizational artifacts (e.g., lan-
guage, furniture, dress codes), to the deeper level of norms
and values that contribute to shape how artefacts are
manifested, and to the most ingrained basic assumptions
that members hold about their organizational reality and its
functioning; and (c) Payne’s (2000) multidimensional
model of cultural intensity and strength.
Building upon Enriquez (1970) typology of culture (e.g.,
autocratic, bureaucratic, clan-patronage, technocratic, and
cooperative), the Petitta et al. (2014) model of culture
conceptualizes the extent to which each culture type is
deeply rooted (i.e., intensity) and shared among organiza-
tional members (i.e., strength). Specifically, intensity con-
siders at progressively deeper levels, the extent to which
people within their organization (a) have a positive attitude
toward the cultural expression (i.e., attitude); (b) align their
behavior to that cultural expression (i.e., behavior); (c) be-
lieve it to be important (i.e., value); and finally, (d) con-
sider the cultural expression to be so deeply rooted that it
reflects a fundamentally accepted part of the organization
(i.e., ingrained belief). On the other hand, strength refers to
the extent to which these attitudes, behaviors, values, and
ingrained beliefs are shared and widespread among orga-
nizational members. As it will be described in the
‘‘Method’’ section, this conceptualization of safety culture
allows to measure members’ perception of both intensity
(i.e., progressively deeper layers) and strength (i.e., the
degree of pervasiveness of each cultural layer among
members) of organizational culture.
While Petitta et al. argued culture can vary on multiple
different organizational dimensions (e.g., organizational
communication, decision making, etc.), the focus of the
current study was on the dimension of safety culture. In an
autocratic safety culture, communication mainly flows
downwards and one’s own direct superior/leader (i.e., au-
thority) is the source of instructions and directions for
employees. Dialogue mainly consists of the delivery of
safety directives and feedback involves corrections which
highlight errors to avoid. In a bureaucratic safety culture,
the fundamental value is adherence to organizational safety
norms and regulations set by top level bureaucratic officials
(i.e., experts who develop norms also in line with local
government requirements). Individuals are expected to re-
spect roles and boundaries and to execute tasks without any
expectation of individual initiative beyond their role
definition. Within the clan-patronage safety culture, there
is a clear distinction between in-group and out-group
membership with in-group members privy to informal (yet
potent) bases of power. Individuals within the group act
differently in the presence of outsiders. This ‘‘two-faced’’
context provides members with different safety rules and
directions dependent upon their current interaction with
members of their inner circle versus more external people.
The technocratic safety culture is characteristic of contexts
which are result-oriented and focused on competition and
innovation. However, prioritizing achievement orientation
may result in safety violations if shortcuts to excellence
include skipping safety steps, or hiding errors, etc. Finally,
Safety Culture, Moral Disengagement, and Accident Underreporting 493
123
within a cooperative safety culture, value is given to the
achievement of consensus and the participation of all
members during decision making. An emphasis is placed
on the contributions of all individuals to collective safety
outcomes due to the organizational assumption that the
resultant whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
Despite the lack of studies on the impact of organiza-
tional culture on individual safety-related MD, there is
some empirical evidence to suggest that during the so-
cialization process at work, employees will internalize
different moral standards and norms in relation to safety,
and that this will contribute to shape the mechanisms that
they subsequently use to justify the enactment of poor
safety behavior (in the current study, underreporting). For
example, White et al. (2009) found that industry standards
promoted the development of collective moral disengage-
ment which was related to the extent to which corporate
executives, lawyers, and public relations personnel justified
their actions regarding the dangers of secondhand smoke,
lead, silicosis, and vinyl chloride.
Given the exploratory and pilot nature of the current
study, we do not develop differential hypotheses on the
impact of specific safety culture typologies on MD.
Therefore, on the basis of the above arguments, we hy-
pothesize that:
Hypothesis 2 Different safety culture types will activate
varying levels of moral disengagement, which in turn will
be positively related to accident underreporting. That is,
moral disengagement mediates the relationship between
safety culture types and accident underreporting.
While we posit that the effects of culture on underre-
porting will be mediated by MD, there is also reason to
potentially expect direct effects of safety culture on acci-
dent underreporting. For example, organizational norms
and social pressure may serve as disincentives for indi-
vidual employees to report their accidents to company of-
ficials (Sinclair and Tetrick 2004). Landsbergis et al.
(1999) found that injury rates were higher in a variety of
industries that were implementing lean production cultures.
Further, Probst (2002) found that when employees were
threatened with layoffs, they chose to focus more on pro-
duction at the expense of safety. Additionally, misguided
safety incentive programs (Probst and Graso 2013) may
foster punitive vs. non-punitive consequences for not re-
porting an accident and encourage/discourage employees’
behavior toward violation of safety standards.
Thus, we also test an alternative model positing the
follow:
Hypothesis 3 Safety culture types will predict accident
underreporting, both directly and indirectly through moral
disengagement.
Method
Participants and Procedure
Surveys were administered to 1033 employees from 28
different organizations in Italy. The mean organizational
sample size was 70 employees (SD = 30) and ranged from
5 to 110. Seventy percent of the companies were private
and 30 % were public. Together, these organizations rep-
resent a wide range of industry sectors where safety com-
pliance is a paramount concern, including manufacturing,
construction, transportation, military, and health care. In
the overall sample, 79.9 % of respondents were male,
18.1 % female, with 2 % leaving the item blank. The av-
erage age was 40.43 years (SD = 10.48), and the average
tenure in the position was 12.93 years (SD = 9.59). Also,
84.3 % were permanent workers, 13.7 % were contingent
workers, with 2 % leaving the item blank. Ten percent held
the role of supervisor/manager whereas about 86 % were
non-managers, with 3.8 % leaving the item blank. Fur-
thermore, managers/supervisors in our sample were dis-
tributed across most organizations (18 out of 28
organizations).
The research team approached administrators within
each organization to request their organization’s par-
ticipation in the study. Upon reaching agreement on par-
ticipation, the research team provided information sessions
at each organizational location to describe the project,
encourage participation, and address concerns from po-
tential participants. Participation was voluntary and
anonymous. The research team distributed questionnaires
which the majority of participants completed that same
day. In some instances, employees were allowed up to two
weeks to complete the survey at home and return it in a
sealed envelope to the research team.
Measures
Below is a description of the measures used to provide data
for the current analyses.
Safety Culture
To measure safety culture, we utilized the 20-item job
safety sub-scale of the Intensity & Strength Organizational
Culture Questionnaire (JS-I&SOCQ; Petitta et al. 2014).
This sub-scale measures the five cultural typologies (au-
tocratic, bureaucratic, clan-patronage, technocratic, and
cooperative) within a safety context. Respondents are first
provided the following prompts describing each of the
cultural typologies with safety as the frame of reference:
‘‘With respect to enacting safety behaviors that are
494 L. Petitta et al.
123
indicated by the boss…’’ (autocratic); ‘‘With respect to
strictly adhering to the rules and safety procedures pro-
posed by the organization…’’ (bureaucratic); ‘‘With re-
spect to following one set of safety rules when you are with
outsiders but following different practices within the
group…’’ (clan-patronage); ‘‘With respect to following the
safety practices only if this doesn’t impede the achieve-
ment of the result and the progress of the work…’’ (tech-
nocratic); and ‘‘With respect to proactively involving all
members of the organization in the diffusion and adoption
of safety practices…’’ (cooperative). After viewing the
prompts, respondents indicate how many people (ranging
from 1 = almost no one to 4 = almost everyone) from
their organization (1) manifest a positive attitude toward
the cultural typology, (2) engage in behavior that is in line
with the cultural typology, (3) attribute importance to the
cultural typology, and (4) consider the cultural typology so
fundamental as to consider it deeply ingrained in the or-
ganizational texture.
Thus, the progressively deeper intensity of safety culture
layers could vary from low (attitudes) to high (deeply
rooted belief), whereas the strength of the safety culture is
reflected in estimates of how many people express that
cultural feature/layer (e.g., almost no one to almost ev-
eryone). The overall score of each culture type (e.g., au-
tocratic) is the averaging of the answers provided to
progressively deeper (intensity) culture layers (e.g., auto-
cratic attitude, autocratic behavior, autocratic value, and
autocratic deeply rooted belief) within that specific culture
type. Therefore, higher mean scores of autocratic, bu-
reaucratic, clan-patronage, technocratic, and cooperative
dimensions are interpreted to reflect a greater manifestation
(i.e., in terms of both intensity and strength) of that cultural
typology within the employees’ organization. Previous
research on the JS-I&SOCQ (Petitta et al. 2012, 2014)
reported excellent scale reliability and construct validity.
Safety Moral Disengagement
Moral disengagement related to workplace safety normswas
measured using a shortened 12-item version of the unidi-
mensional Job Safety Moral Disengagement scale (JS-MD;
Barbaranelli and Perna 2004). Items from this version were
carefully developed following the guidelines and the word-
ing of other scales produced in the literature for measuring
moral disengagement (e.g., Bandura et al. 1996; Caprara
et al. 2009). Each item clearly reflects a specific moral dis-
engagement mechanism. However, as it is common in the
literature on moral disengagement, from a factorial point of
view items in this scale reflect a singlemoral disengagement
latent dimension, and the six mechanisms are not separable.
As noted above, this is a very common result, obtained also
when MD is measured in adolescent aggression domain
(Bandura et al. 1996), in everyday life transgressions
(Caprara et al. 2009), and in general unethical behavior to-
ward others at work (Barsky 2011; Moore et al. 2012).
The abbreviated version of the scale was developed
based on the published item factor loadings reported by
Barbaranelli and Perna (2004). For each of the six MD
mechanisms (i.e., moral justification; advantageous com-
parison; displacement of responsibility; diffusion of re-
sponsibility; distorting consequences; and attribution of
blame), the two items showing the highest loadings within
each mechanism were selected resulting in a final short-
ened scale of 12 items. A sample item is ‘‘Safety checks are
useless, because most machines will eventually malfunc-
tion’’ and response options ranged from 1 = Strongly
Disagree to 5 = Strongly Agree. Table 2 in Appendix 1
reports the complete short-version of the JS-MD scale used
in the present study.
Accident Underreporting
Using a measure developed by Smecko and Hayes (1999),
employees were asked to indicate how many safety acci-
dents they experienced and reported to appropriate com-
pany officials and how many accidents they had
experienced but not reported to appropriate company of-
ficials over the past 12 months. Although the workplace
accident variables were self-report in nature, previous
studies do indicate that self-report measures of accidents
and unsafe behaviors are related to independent observa-
tions of these variables (Lusk et al. 1995).
In order to ensure consistent interpretation of the ques-
tion, we provided the following definitions for the terms
used in the items. Accident: An unplanned and uncontrolled
event that led to injury to persons, damage to proper-
ty/plant/equipment, or some other loss to the company.
Reported event: A safety incident that was reported to a
company official (e.g., supervisor, manager, safety offi-
cial). Unreported event: A safety incident that was NOT
reported to any company official.
Using these data, we could compute the total number of
experienced accidents relative to the number actually re-
ported. Accident underreporting was then operationalized
as the proportion of the total number of experienced acci-
dents that went unreported to the organization. To avoid
zeros in the denominator, a very small constant (.00001)
was added to the denominator (Tabachnick and Fidell
2007). Due to high skewness and kurtosis, this variable was
then considered as ‘‘censored’’ in the following analyses.
Control Variables
We included the respondents’ type of contract (i.e., per-
manent vs contingent) as a control variable because
Safety Culture, Moral Disengagement, and Accident Underreporting 495
123
literature (Quinlan 1999) suggests contingent workers are
less likely than permanent workers to report accidents.
Item responses were coded as follows: permanent was
scored 0; and contingent was scored 1. Furthermore,
while both managers and non-managers must report ac-
cidents (e.g., European Agency for Safety and Health at
Work; EU-OSHA, 2014; Occupational Safety and Health
Administration; OSHA, 1993), managers take on the re-
sponsibility of observing employees on the job, investi-
gating incidents, and reporting accidents as part of their
normal supervisory role. Therefore, the type of position
may affect the accident reporting behavior. The coding
was respectively 0 for non-managers, and 1 for managers
(i.e., supervisor, manager). Finally, our sample included
organizations from both public and private sectors. Be-
cause safety processes might be more mandatorily applied
and controlled in the context of public administration, we
included respondents’ belongingness to different organi-
zation types as a control variable. The coding was, re-
spectively, 0 for public and 1 for private organization
type.
Data Analysis Approach
The resulting data for this study were hierarchical in
nature with people nested within organizations. Because
such data are non-independent, they can result in artifi-
cially low estimates of standard errors. To rectify this,
the common data analytic approach would be to use
multilevel modeling. However, the number of organiza-
tions in our sample was limited to only 28, whereas
researchers (e.g., Heck and Thomas 2000; Hox 2002)
have recommended a minimum of 50–100 groups to
obtain reliable multilevel-SEM results. Therefore, we
used a different approach that statistically takes into
account the hierarchical structure of our data, while also
being consistent with the literature’s recommendations
related to the level-2 sample size. Specifically, we used
the ‘‘TYPE = COMPLEX’’ procedure within MPLUS
(Muthen and Muthen 1998–2012). This MPLUS com-
mand produces corrected parameters estimates, standard
errors, and test statistics in the presence of multilevel
interdependency.
Results
Measurement Model
In order to test the factorial validity of the JS-IS&OCQ
and the shortened version of the JS-MD, a preliminary
confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) tested the fit of a six
latent variables’ structure (i.e., five cultural typologies
and JS-MD) measured by the 32 observed variables. The
model was tested on the covariance matrix using the
Maximum Likelihood Robust estimation method. Next,
we compared the fit of the six-factor model against a one-
factor model in which each item loaded onto a single
factor.
Results from the six-factor CFA showed excellent fit
indices: v2 (409, N = 1032) = 982.118, p\ .001,
RMSEA = .037 (.034; .040), CFI = .95, TLI = .95, with
factor loadings all significant and above .51 with the ex-
ception of one item of MD which displayed a factor loading
of .25. Therefore, we dropped this item and again ran the
six-factor CFA measured by the remaining 31 observed
variables. Results from the second CFA still showed ex-
cellent fit indices: v2 (379, N = 1033) = 914.648, p\ .001,
RMSEA = .037 (.034; .040), CFI = .96, TLI = .95, with
factor loadings all significant and ranging from .65 to .92 for
culture factors, and from .51 to .72 for MD. Additionally,
correlations among the latent JS-MD and culture factors
ranged from .12 to .35. On the other hand, correlations
among the five culture factors ranged from .02 to .72. Fi-
nally, results from the one-factor CFA showed inadequate fit
indices: v2 (394, N = 1033) = 7999.334, p\ .001,
RMSEA = .137 (.134; .139), CFI = .39, TLI = .28. Taken
together, these results demonstrated the appropriateness of
the six hypothesized latent factors and the distinctiveness of
JS-MD and the safety culture typologies.
Descriptive Statistics and Correlations
Means, standard deviations, alpha coefficients, and zero-
order correlations among the scales are reported in
Table 1. As shown in the diagonal of this table, each
study variable has a good degree of internal consistency
reliability (Cronbach’s alpha), ranging from .86 to .93.
Zero-order correlations were calculated at the indi-
vidual- and organizational-levels and suggest interesting
preliminary patterns of relationships. In support of
Hypothesis 1, we see that higher use of safety-related
MD mechanisms is significantly related to higher levels
of employee accident underreporting behaviors both at
the individual- (r = .16, p\ .01) and organizational-
level (r = .54, p\ .01). In partial support of Hy-
pothesis 2, technocratic safety culture is positively
correlated with higher levels of JS-MD both at the in-
dividual- (r = .33, p\ .01) and organizational-level
(r = .46, p\ .05). Finally, type of contract, organiza-
tion type, and type of position showed some significant
correlations with accident underreporting and MD.
Hence, based on these patterns of relationships, these
control variables were included in the subsequent
structural models.
496 L. Petitta et al.
123
Structural Models
In order to more rigorously test our hypotheses, a first
structural equation model (Model 1) was performed using
the WLSMV method of estimation. This method produces
correct parameter estimates and goodness of fit indices in
presence of censored variables, such as the accident un-
derreporting measure included in the model. Again, due to
the multilevel structure of data, in order to obtain an ap-
propriate correction for standard errors, we used the
TYPE = COMPLEX procedure in Mplus. In this model,
no direct effects were posited among the five culture
variables and accidents underreporting; rather we posited
that the effect of safety culture on accident underreporting
would be fully mediated by MD.
The model1 showed an adequate fit to the data: v2 (484,N = 922) = 540.278, p\ .05, RMSEA = .011 (.003;
.016), CFI = .95, TLI = .94. As can be seen in Fig. 1,
there were low to moderate correlations amongst the dif-
ferent cultural types with significant correlations ranging
from .19 (clan-patronage and cooperative) to .73 (bureau-
cratic and autocratic). To the extent that multiple culture
types potentially co-exist in the same context, this might
indicate that a link among these culture types is possible
when normative safety culture schemas (i.e., Bureaucratic)
are potentially conveyed by the supervisor (i.e., Autocratic)
or by proactive involvement of all members of the orga-
nization (i.e., Cooperative).
As predicted by Hypothesis 1, MD exerted a positive
significant effect of .24 (p\ .01) on accident underre-
porting.2 In support of Hypothesis 2, after controlling for
type of contract (permanent vs. contingent), job position
(non manager vs. manager), and type of organization
(public vs. private), technocratic safety culture exerted a
significant and positive effect of .37 (p\ .001) on MD,
while bureaucratic safety culture exerted a significant but
negative effect of -.16 (p\ .001). All other effects on MD
were not statistically significant.
Technocratic safety culture and bureaucratic safety
culture exerted indirect effects on accident underreporting
through MD, respectively, of .09 (p\ .01) and -.04
(p\ .01). The remaining Autocratic, Clan-Patronage, and
Cooperative Safety Cultures exerted no significant indirect
effects on accident underreporting through MD, respec-
tively, of -.011 (p = 433), .001 (p = 863), and -.006
Table 1 Descriptive statistics, correlations, and Cronbach’s alphas
Variable Mean SD 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
1. Permanent versus
contingent
.14 .35 - -.27 .47* -.43* -.27 -.15 .06 -.29 .23 .24
2. Non manager versus
manager
.11 .31 -.07* – -.53* -.23 -.26 -.36 -.32 -.29 -.27 -.33
3. Public versus private .70 .46 -.19** -.25** – .02 -.02 .20 .12 .05 .24 .30
4. Autocratic culture 2.82 .73 -.07* -.02 -.01 (.86) .79** .38* -.04 .69** -.10 -.18
5. Bureaucratic culture 2.89 .73 -.09** .03 -.04 .67** (.87) .46* -.01 .83** .04 .15
6. Clan-patronage culture 2.44 .84 -.03 -.03 -.03 .20** .21** (.92) .69** .64** .27 .38*
7. Technocratic culture 2.21 .88 .06* -.05* -.05 .04 .04 .49** (.93) .24 .46* .42*
8. Cooperative culture 2.73 .77 -.11* -.03 -.02 .51** .51** .18** .05 (.89) .29 .34
9. Moral disengagement 1.93 .75 .09** -.14** .09** -.14** -.16** .14** .33** -.11** (.88) .54**
10. Accident underreporting .06 .22 .03 -.05 .10** -.02 .01 .03 .09** .03 .16** –
Correlations below the diagonal are at the individual-level (listwise n = 922), whereas those above the diagonal are at the organizational-level
(N = 28). Mean and SD are reported at the individual-level; Cronbach’s alpha is reported along the diagonal in brackets
* p\ .05; ** p\ .01
1 Because we utilized a convenience sample, we also tested our
results controlling for age and gender. Gender was the only variable
significantly correlated with both accident underreporting and MD.
Therefore, it was tested as an additional control variable in our
hypothesized structural model. Notably, our results did not change
after controlling for this sample demographic (results are available
upon request to the authors). Therefore, we can rule out the
hypothesis that these demographics are potential convenience sample
bias that exert a significant influence on the activation of MD or
accident underreporting.
2 Because not all employees experienced a workplace accident, we
ran an alternative regression analysis to test whether the strength and
direction of the relationship between MD and underreporting
remained consistent when restricting our sample to only include
those individuals who actually experienced a workplace accident.
After controlling for type of contract, public versus private sector, and
managerial status, we found that MD remained a significant predictor
of underreporting, F(1, 153) = 7.52, p\ .007, DR2 = .05. Notably,
the beta coefficient was .22, which is nearly identical with the SEM
results reported using the full sample where the path coefficient was
.24.
Safety Culture, Moral Disengagement, and Accident Underreporting 497
123
(p = 660). Finally, none of the control variables exerted a
significant effect on accident underreporting, whereas the
type of position was the only control variable exerting a
significant (p\ .05) and negative (-.18) effect on MD.
That is, lower levels of MD were associated to respondents
holding the role of manager/supervisor. Overall, the model
explained the 21 % of MD variance and the 14 % of ac-
cident underreporting variance.
In order to test Hypothesis 3, a second alternative
structural equation model (Model 2) was performed that
modeled the direct and indirect effects among the five
culture variables and accident underreporting. This model
showed an adequate fit to the data: v2 (479,
N = 922) = 535.093, p\ .05, RMSEA = .011 (.003;
.016), CFI = .95, TLI = .94. Furthermore, results from the
Chi square test for difference testing between Model 1 and
Model 2 were not significant (Dv2 (5, N = 922) = 7.274,
p = .201). Because the two models showed the same level
of fit to the data, Model 1 was preferable given its greater
parsimony (Preacher 2006). Therefore, the final results are
those reported in Model 1 and shown in Fig. 1.
Discussion
While the popular press tends to focus on high-profile in-
stances of individuals ‘‘faking’’ workplace injuries in order
to falsely receive workers compensation or extended dis-
ability payments, the reality is that accident underreporting
is a far more prevalent phenomenon with estimates sug-
gesting up to 80 % of experienced accidents go unreported
(Probst et al. 2008; Probst and Graso 2013). Such under-
reporting has numerous adverse consequences for em-
ployees, employing organizations, and society at large. For
the affected employee, failure to report an accident often
results in the worker’s injury going untreated. From an
organizational perspective, underreporting can leave the
root causes of employee accidents unaddressed and unfixed
possibly to crop up again in the future and affect other
employees. From a societal perspective, inaccurate acci-
dent reporting undermines national public health surveil-
lance statistics and impedes policy efforts to develop safer
and healthier workplaces. Thus, it is important to develop a
more comprehensive theoretical understanding of the rea-
sons why employees may engage in such behavior.
The literature suggests that there are both person- and
organizational-level factors that explain why employees
avoid reporting the workplace accidents they experience
(Probst and Graso 2011). Given that accident reporting is
typically mandatory in organizations and not considered a
discretionary behavior (Probst 2013), failure to report an
experienced accident can be considered a form of safety
non-compliance. Therefore, the primary purpose of the
current study was to contribute to the growing literature on
underreporting by exploring the role of both MD (an in-
dividual-level factor) and organizational culture (an orga-
nizational-level factor) as predictors of employee accident
underreporting. In doing so, we sought to gain a better
understanding of the antecedents and mechanisms by
which employees avoid reporting experienced workplace
accidents.
The results from our study suggest that organizational
safety culture serves as an antecedent that differentially
predicts the activation of safety-related MD among em-
ployees. In particular, organizational contexts pervaded by
bureaucratic enforcement of safety norms (i.e., bureau-
cratic safety culture) were related to lower levels of em-
ployee MD. Conversely, a technocratic safety culture (in
AutocraticCulture
BureaucraticCulture
Clan-PatronageCulture
TechnocraticCulture
CooperativeCulture
MoralDisengagement
AccidentUnder-reporting
.73***
.21***
.21***
.52***
.61***
.54***
.19***
-.16***
.37**
.24**
R²=.21 R²=.14
ORG. TYPE POSITIONCONTRACT
-.18*
Fig. 1 Results from the final
structural model (Model 1).
Note *p\ .05, **p\ .01,
***p\ .001. Dotted lines are
non significant effects. ORG.
TYPE organization type
498 L. Petitta et al.
123
which safety practices are only followed if they do not
impede achievement of desired production outcomes) ap-
pears to be related to higher employee disengagement from
the safety-related moral consequences, which in turn was
related to increased accident underreporting.
Interestingly, MD fully mediated the relationship be-
tween safety culture and accident underreporting. This
indicates that safety culture does not have a direct effect
on accident reporting behaviors, but rather has its influ-
ence via the role that culture plays in shaping safety-
related moral disengagement. Consistent with literature on
the development of MD in other settings (Bandura 2002),
employees actively elaborate the shared contextual norms
and develop strategies that enable them to violate such
norms and self-exonerate from the responsibilities of their
safety misconduct. These results were obtained after
controlling for type of contract (permanent vs. contin-
gent), job position (non manager vs. manager), and type
of organization (public vs. private), none of which exerted
a significant effect on accident underreporting. Taken
together, our findings confirm that it is important to si-
multaneously consider both context- and individual-level
variables when explaining safety violations, and add to
that literature by demonstrating the important roles of
organizational culture and MD mechanisms in predicting
employee accident underreporting.
Theoretical Implications
Our findings make several novel contributions to the
extant literatures in two distinct areas—MD and occu-
pational safety. As noted above, this is the first study to
merge these two streams of research to investigate the
extent to which JS-MD predicts employee accident un-
derreporting. The results of our study suggest that MD
mechanisms which allow people to mitigate the moral
consequences of misconduct (Bandura 1999) may explain
individual variation in the enactment of underreporting.
Moreover, the results of the current study also highlight
the potentially important role played by safety culture in
activating these MD mechanisms and increasing the
likelihood of subsequent underreporting. While there is a
robust literature on the relationship between safety cul-
ture and climate and employee safety outcomes, the
present study is the first to explore MD as an explana-
tory mechanism for that link. To our knowledge, current
safety climate and culture theories have not looked at
MD as a mediating variable, but rather focus on safety
knowledge and motivation as individual-level mediators
linking culture and climate to safety performance (e.g.,
Neal et al. 2000). While safety culture and climate can
certainly shape knowledge and motivation, our research
indicates that culture is also related to the propensity for
individual employees to morally disengage from their
organizational duty to accurately report workplace acci-
dents. Such safety-related MD includes justifying safety
violations due to a) perceived benefits (moral justifica-
tion), b) social pressures to produce (distorting conse-
quences), and/or c) placing blame elsewhere (attribution
of blame).
Our study also responds to prior calls for a better
understanding of how moral disengagement is situa-
tionally motivated (Shu et al. 2011), i.e., determining
the specific contextual factors that trigger MD
mechanisms such as organizational culture (Fida et al.
2014). While the literature on MD mechanisms has long
suggested that they are internalized during the social-
ization process that regulates moral standards of an
individual, and are co-determined by culture norms
(Bandura 1990), our study is the first to explore the role
of organizational culture (i.e., a context-level factor) as
a predictor of MD mechanisms applied to organiza-
tional settings, and specifically to safety at the work-
place. In particular, the five-typology model of safety
culture (i.e., autocratic, bureaucratic, clan-patronage,
technocratic, and cooperative) proposed in the current
study allowed us to examine the likelihood of MD
activation as a function of the strength and intensity of
these culture types. Specifically, we found that bu-
reaucratic safety culture attitudes, behaviors, values, and
beliefs shared among organizational members appeared
to provide a protective factor from MD justifications.
Conversely, shared attitudes, behaviors, values, and
beliefs indicative of a technocratic safety culture ap-
peared to be a risk factor for the emergence of MD. As
Probst and Graso (2013) noted, research has shown that
employees often view the organizational demands of
safety and production as competitive in nature. Hence,
organizations which place an emphasis on production at
the expense of safety may foster a Technocratic Culture
in which employees share the perception that the safety
risks are worth the potential rewards accrued by a focus
on production. As a result, the Technocratic Culture
may become a contextual factor that triggers MD
mechanisms.
Finally, our results contribute to research on social
cognitive theory (Bandura 1986). Our finding that MD
fully mediates the relationship between safety culture and
accident underreporting is consistent with the agentic na-
ture of individuals posited by Bandura (Ibid.), and further
expands its application to safety misconduct. That is, in-
dividuals actively elaborate shared contextual norms and
develop strategies that may more (or less) enable them to
violate such norms and self-exonerate from the responsi-
bilities of their violations from the responsibilities of their
safety violations. Our results also support the interactionist
Safety Culture, Moral Disengagement, and Accident Underreporting 499
123
(i.e., individual-environment) perspective suggesting that
individuals internalize contextual norms and shape them in
ways that help them to disengage from the sense of guilt
associated with their safety violations. Accident underre-
porting appears to be fostered by a technocratic safety
culture, yet this effect is exerted only through the devel-
opment of moral justifications for engaging in behaviors
that sacrifice safety. Conversely, underreporting appears to
be discouraged by bureaucratic organizational contexts
which emphasize rigorous adoption of safety procedures.
Again, this effect is exerted through a reduction in MD.
Practical Implications
The findings of our study are of practical relevance from
several standpoints. First, as noted earlier, the economic
costs of workplace accidents account for 2.8 % of the gross
domestic product (GDP) in Italy (Eurispes 2010). Our
study demonstrated that the combined effects of organi-
zational culture and MD account for 14 % of accident
underreporting. While this may seem like a relatively small
proportion of variance explained, interventions to modify
the organizational culture and reduce the subsequent en-
actment of MD have the potential to significantly reduce
the high social and economic costs of workplace injuries
and underreporting.
Our inclusion of organizational culture, and particularly
five specific patterns of safety culture, is also in line with
the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work (EU-
OSHA) preventive initiatives (e.g., Working together for
risk prevention, EU-OSHA, 2013) that focus on the im-
portance of joint management and employee involvement
in injury prevention programs. Our study indicates that a
bureaucratic safety culture discourages employees to
morally disengage from safety violations, whereas a tech-
nocratic safety culture is predictive of higher employee
MD. Therefore, management and employees should be
made aware of the specific influence that their organiza-
tional culture may have on the development of MD
mechanisms and subsequent underreporting. Our findings
suggest that enhancing bureaucratic features related to
safety enforcement and de-emphasizing technocratic fea-
tures related to production pressure at the expense of safety
may help decrease the activation of safety-related MD and
subsequent underreporting behaviors.
While modifying existing culture patterns is challenging,
research suggests interventions should focus on changing
programs that crystallize the organization’s beliefs and be-
haviors (DeJoy 2005). Furthermore, given the deeply rooted
nature of shared organizational culture beliefs (Schein
1985), intervention effectiveness assessment should evalu-
ate the extent to which the safety culture may be affected at
multiple levels within the organization, i.e., employees, su-
pervisors/middle management, and top management. Fi-
nally, our results indicate that safety-related training
programs might also fruitfully aim to enhance employees’
awareness of their own moral reasoning and the specific
strategies (i.e.,MDmechanisms) they use to developmorally
disengaged thinking. Such self-awareness is the first step to
recognizing their own use of MD, as well as MD enacted by
other organizational members. In conclusion, by better un-
derstanding the conjoint influence of safety culture typolo-
gies and employee safety-related MD, organizations may be
able to more effectively focus their safety improvement
efforts.
Strengths, Limitations, and Future Directions
In addition to the theoretical and practical contributions
noted above, there are other notable strengths of the current
study. First, the large and diverse samples drawn from awide
variety of organizations in at-risk industry sectors afford
greater confidence in the external generalizability of the
current findings. Additionally, by correcting for the non-in-
dependence of employees nested within organizations, we
were better able to estimate the effect sizes relating culture,
MD, and accident underreporting.
Despite these strengths, it is also important to recognize
the limitations of our study in order to promote future re-
search that can further build upon our work. First, as with
much occupational health psychology research, our study
relies on a convenience sample to test our hypotheses, and
on self-report data. Such self-report measures of accidents
and accident reporting could be misleading due to im-
pression management goals of the employee and/or other
incentives for employees to respond to survey questions
about reporting in a specific way. However, it is important
to reiterate that the data collected in the study were com-
pletely anonymous and employees knew individual data
would not be shared with supervisors or management.
Notably, in the current study, we found that across the
entire sample, employees indicated they failed to report
247 accidents out of a total of 485 accidents actually ex-
perienced. This alone suggests that while employees may
not be willing to tell their employer about all of their ac-
cidents, they were willing to tell us as researchers. More-
over, previous research indicates that self-report measures
of accidents and unsafe behaviors are related to indepen-
dent observations of these variables (Lusk et al. 1995). In
comparing self-ratings and observer ratings of employee
500 L. Petitta et al.
123
use of hearing protection, they found that these were highly
correlated (.89) concluding that self-reports of safety-re-
lated behavior are appropriate and ‘‘may be the best choice
when time and monetary resources restrict measurement to
one indicator.’’ Nevertheless, future research could address
this question empirically by evaluating the extent to which
social desirable responding is related to employee levels of
underreporting.
A second limitation concerns the cross-sectional nature
of the data. Although this study provides an initial test of
the proposed relationships, longitudinal research would
allow us to more rigorously test the causal direction of our
hypothesized relationships, as well as how the effects of
organizational safety culture on MD may unfold over time.
For example, longitudinal research could better delineate
the potentially recursive relationships between culture
norms and MD mechanisms proposed by social cognitive
theory (Bandura 2002). In other words, while internalized
cultural norms may prompt the development of MD, sub-
sequent behavior (e.g., accident underreporting) may in
turn further shape the cultural content.
Moreover, although our analytic approach accounted for
the nested nature of our data by correcting the standard
errors of organizational culture, future research obtaining a
larger number of organizations would allow for an even
more rigorous test of the model within a full multilevel
approach. Also, our study targeted organizations in at-risk
of injuries sectors, yet future research using other survey
data collected from additional and different at-risk pro-
fessional groups should be conducted in the future to
provide further support for the study’s findings. Along a
similar vein, the current research while relying on a data
from a diverse set of organizations and industry sections
nevertheless represents only a single national context
(Italy). Therefore, it would be good to replicate our find-
ings in other countries, and in particular countries that may
differ on potentially relevant national cultural dimensions,
such as individualism/collectivism, power distance, and
uncertainty avoidance.
Finally, with respect to ethics specifically, one inter-
esting avenue for future research would be to expand our
multilevel framework to include the direct impact of one’s
supervisor. While the current study was focused on the
contextual effects at the organizational-level, it would also
be important to consider the role of supervisor ethics and
safety leadership. Supervisors serve as the interface be-
tween upper management and the individual employees
and help to ‘‘translate’’ the espoused organizational culture
into enacted aspects (Zohar and Luria 2003). Therefore,
future research could further develop hypotheses regarding
potential mediating and/or moderating roles played by su-
pervisor leadership in the activation of MD mechanisms.
Conclusions
Despite these limitations, the current research is the first to
empirically demonstrate that safety-related MD mechan-
isms predict employee accident underreporting behaviors.
Our study is also the first to explore the role of organiza-
tional culture (i.e., a context-level factor) as a predictor of
MD mechanisms in a variety of organizational settings and
industries. By demonstrating that certain cultural typolo-
gies (particularly bureaucratic and technocratic) are dif-
ferentially related to the enactment of safety-related MD
and subsequent accident underreporting, we contributed to
the extant literatures in these areas by identifying a new
mechanism by which culture impacts employee safety be-
havior. Whereas previous research has focused on the im-
pact of culture and climate on employee levels of safety
knowledge and motivation as predictors of safety perfor-
mance, our research suggests that another potentially im-
portant explanatory mechanism is the impact of culture on
employee MD. As such, our findings add to our theoretical
and practical knowledge regarding the individual and
contextual factors influencing employee safety in the
workplace.
Appendix 1
See Table 2.
Safety Culture, Moral Disengagement, and Accident Underreporting 501
123
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Table 2 Job safety MD scale items
JS-MD scale
Italian version English version
1. Il servizio di prevenzione e protezione non serve a nulla: gli
incidenti capitano a chi e disattento
1. Safety prevention is useless; accidents happen to those who are
inattentive
2. E giusto che i datori non facciano applicare le norme di sicurezza,
se questo garantisce un risparmio e dei salari piu elevati
2. It is ok if employers avoid enforcing safety rules, especially if it
results in savings and higher wages.
3. E inutile un controllo sulle attrezzature perche anche dopo i
controlli molte macchine non funzionano bene
3. Safety checks are useless, because most machines will eventually
malfunction
4. Non ha senso che il singolo lavoratore applichi le norme di
sicurezza, dal momento che queste andrebbero applicate a livello
collettivo
4. Individual workers are not responsible for any failure to enforce
safety policies if everyone in the company does not comply
5. Tutti i giorni si corrono dei gravi rischi per la salute: non vale la
pena preoccuparsi di quelli relativi alla sicurezza sul lavoro
5. Serious safety risks are taken every day; therefore, it is worthless to
worry about workplace safety
6. Non ha senso punire i singoli lavoratori che non applicano le misure
di sicurezza: o si puniscono tutti o nessuno
6. It does not make sense to single out individual workers who fail to
comply with the safety rules; either everyone who breaks the rules
should be punished or no one
7. Un addetto qualificato deve occuparsi dell’applicazione delle norme
sulla sicurezza, non e compito dei singoli lavoratori
7. Designated officials should be responsible for safety in the
workplace; it is not the responsibility of individual workers
8. I lavoratori dovrebbero occuparsi di cose piu serie e non di piccoli
difetti ai dispositivi
8. Employees have more serious things to be preoccupied with than
minor machinery malfunctions
9. Le norme sulla sicurezza sono esagerate in realta molti lavori non
sono cosı pericolosi come sembra
9. Safety risks are exaggerated; most work is not as dangerous as
portrayed
10. Un lavoratore non puo essere incolpato se non vengono applicate
le norme sulla sicurezza, di questo devono occuparsi i suoi capi
10. Individual employees should not be blamed if safety rules are not
followed; this is the responsibility of their boss
11. Chi non e attento sul lavoro deve dare la colpa a se stesso/a se
subisce un incidente
11. Those who are inattentive at work should blame themselves if they
have an accident
12. Per essere piu competitive sul mercato e giusto che le aziende
taglino i costi per la sicurezza
12. It is ok for companies to cut their safety budget in order to be more
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