IS IT POSSIBLE TO FOSTER LONG-TERM CONSTRUCTION-SITE SAFETY LEADERSHIP THROUGH BEHAVIOURAL TRAINING?

Paper in proceeding, 2023

Despite the increasing popularity of organisational leadership training, context-specific longer-term training transfer remains under-researched. We examine how two safety-leadership behaviours - giving performance feedback and listening actively -were retained, applied, and transferred from the learning context to the construction-site workplace. Four to five months after the completion of a nine-week individualised behaviour-based safety-leadership training (IBST), carried out in Sweden, open-ended life-story, 90-minute interviews were carried out with seven site-manager participants and their respective seven foreman/woman. The findings suggest that long-term safety-leadership behaviours may be transferred to the workplace; however, contextual contingencies and exigencies, for example, participant characteristics and situated work-environment, proved of crucial importance for training transfer. To achieve effective safety-leadership training transfer that reinforces safe behaviour on construction sites, it would be wise to problematise the dynamics of participant motivations and situated construction-project factors.