Managers’ attitudes towards safety and accident prevention

The aims of the present paper are to determine attitudes towards safety and accident prevention among presidents, vice-presidents and managers in the industrial company Norsk Hydro and to analyse the associations between attitudes, behavioural intentions and behaviour. The sample consisted of 210 respondents and the data was collected in 1997 and 1998 among participants at the Hydro Management Safety Training Workshops, which is a safety course for the managers employed by the company. Managers’ attitudes are interesting because they may affect behavioural intentions and the managers’ behaviour related to the achievement of safe working practices. Eight attitudinal dimensions explained up to nearly 40% of the variance in behaviour. The study shows that safety attitudes may be an important causal factor for managers’ behavioural intentions as well as behaviour. High management commitment, low fatalism, high safety priority, and high risk awareness seemed to be particularly important attitudes for managers.