Thirty years of safety climate research: Reflections and future directions

Looking back over 30 years of my own and other safety-climate scholars’ research, my primary reflection is that we have achieved an enormous task of validating safety climate as a robust leading indicator or predictor of safety outcomes across industries and countries. The time has therefore come for moving to the next phase of scientific inquiry in which constructs are being augmented by testing its relationships with antecedents, moderators and mediators, as well as relationships with other established constructs. Whereas there has been some significant progress in this direction over the last 30 years (e.g. leadership as a climate antecedent), much more work is required for augmenting safety climate theory. I hope this article will stimulate further work along these lines.