Mittal, VikasSridhar, Shrihari2022-09-262022-11-012022-052022-04-22May 2022Im, Taehoon. "Safety Culture and Firm Performance." (2022) Diss., Rice University. <a href="https://hdl.handle.net/1911/113393">https://hdl.handle.net/1911/113393</a>.https://hdl.handle.net/1911/113393Firms may face substantial costs due to safety crises. Such costs arise when their products and services harm customers or when they lack employee safety at the workplace. To deal with such costs, many firms invest in establishing and promoting safety culture within their organizations. This dissertation is to investigate the effects of safety culture on firm performance. Chapter 1 provides a literature review of prior research examining the association between safety culture and its outcomes. To do so, I examine prior research on (1) safety culture, (2) measures of safety culture and (3) the association between safety culture and its outcomes to customers, employees and firms. Therefore, Chapter 1 shows the areas that need to be further investigated in the stream of research on safety culture. Chapter 2 develops a new measure of safety culture. By adapting from the three most widely used existing measures of safety culture (i.e., Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture (HSOPS), Safety Attitude Questionnaire (SAQ) and Patient Safety Climate in Healthcare Organization (PSCHO)), I develop a safety culture scale that is applicable to multiple industries. By doing so, Chapter 2 provides a means to measuring safety culture of the organizations beyond particular industries (e.g., healthcare industry). Chapter 3 establishes the association among safety culture, customer/employee safety outcomes, customer/employee satisfaction and firm performance. Prior empirical research has not looked at the effects of safety culture in terms of customer satisfaction and firm performance (e.g., sales), which are important to executives and managers who decide to invest in establishing and promoting safety culture within organizations. I empirically test the safety culture-firm performance chain link based on (1) customer-and employee-reported safety culture, (2) perceived and objective, and self-reported and observed customer and employee safety outcomes, (3) single-and multi-item customer and employee satisfaction, and (4) self-reported and observed firm performance. Chapter 3 shows that the full safety culture-customer/employee safety outcomes-customer/employee satisfaction-firm performance chain link is well established in multi-industry, single-firm and business-to-business settings. The findings of this dissertation provide implications to executives and managers, enabling them to leverage safety culture to enhance their customer, employee and firm value.application/pdfengCopyright is held by the author, unless otherwise indicated. Permission to reuse, publish, or reproduce the work beyond the bounds of fair use or other exemptions to copyright law must be obtained from the copyright holder.Safety CultureCustomer Safety OutcomesEmployee Safety OutcomesCustomer SatisfactionEmployee SatisfactionFirm PerformanceThesis2022-09-26