Analysis and relations between organizational factors, company performance and risk level on site at construction sector
Metadata
Show full item recordAuthor
Advisor
Date
2016Unesco Subject/s
3310.05 Ingeniería de Procesos
5311.07 Investigación Operativa
Abstract
Our research is focused on construction sector and the actual construction site as a specific work place. The site has specific characteristics that affect risk generation and its evolution. But, the presently available risk assessment tools do not capture all the possible specificities of construction sites that may affect risk, because they only focus on assessing risks from an already predefined hierarchy of events. One of our main challenges is to design a tool that measure most of the possible risks associated with the whole construction site, which is generated by uniting different elements which individually affect risk. By doing so, we introduce the new concept of “global risk” and a new global risk assessment model, CONSRAT, that takes the site as a unit of analysis and also includes material conditions, organizational structure and site resources. Once having designed CONSRAT, we proposed to test our main hypotheses that relates site complexity and site organizational design complexity with the direct increasing effect on risk level. A Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) approach was adopted to obtain empirical evidences for testing our theoretical model. To develop our empirical research, we visited and assessed 957 building sites in Spain. All the needed data was obtained by using our own tool specifically designed for this propose. CONSRAT operationalizes the variables to fit out the model, specifically, a site risk index (SRI) to measure the level of risk on sites and 10 organizational variables that we use to build four latent variables. Our present research ends examining the relationships among level of risk conditions on construction sites, accident rates and economic performance of firms. In order to do that, we used the main sites’ sample commented above, with the levels of risk on site obtained with CONSRAT. In this case, with those risk levels obtained, we have added the economic firm results and accident rates. With all this information we have built a panel data. The general hypothesis in this section is that the level of risk on site has an effect on accident rates, and accident rates have an effect on economic firm performance. Our most important contribution in this field is to show evidence that supports the hypotheses that some management issues matter on risk levels. Our results show a statistically significant evidence of the relationship between the level of risk on site and accident rates. We have partially confirmed the next hypotheses about the quadratic influence between accidents rates and economic performance. The incidence of this quadratic terms suggest to be more complex than lineal relationships between those variables. This relationship gives us empirical evidence that, initially, it is possible to combine an increase in accidents with an increase of assets, but there is an inflection point where this tendency changes and more levels of accidents decrease the finally financial performance. Results are relevant to contribute to actual knowledge in this field because of two main reasons: first, considering the lack of research at task level on sites, the present research contributes to this important issue. Secondly, based on our empirical evidences, we concluded that it necessary more promotion and control by the Public Administration over the live conditions on site. This is because the companies, trying to maximize their economic results, may not find the optimal level of accidents rate, understanding this optimal level by global terms. That includes social, personal and companies interests.
Our research is focused on construction sector and the actual construction site as a specific work place. The site has specific characteristics that affect risk generation and its evolution. But, the presently available risk assessment tools do not capture all the possible specificities of construction sites that may affect risk, because they only focus on assessing risks from an already predefined hierarchy of events. One of our main challenges is to design a tool that measure most of the possible risks associated with the whole construction site, which is generated by uniting different elements which individually affect risk. By doing so, we introduce the new concept of “global risk” and a new global risk assessment model, CONSRAT, that takes the site as a unit of analysis and also includes material conditions, organizational structure and site resources. Once having designed CONSRAT, we proposed to test our main hypotheses that relates site complexity and site organizational design complexity with the direct increasing effect on risk level. A Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) approach was adopted to obtain empirical evidences for testing our theoretical model. To develop our empirical research, we visited and assessed 957 building sites in Spain. All the needed data was obtained by using our own tool specifically designed for this propose. CONSRAT operationalizes the variables to fit out the model, specifically, a site risk index (SRI) to measure the level of risk on sites and 10 organizational variables that we use to build four latent variables. Our present research ends examining the relationships among level of risk conditions on construction sites, accident rates and economic performance of firms. In order to do that, we used the main sites’ sample commented above, with the levels of risk on site obtained with CONSRAT. In this case, with those risk levels obtained, we have added the economic firm results and accident rates. With all this information we have built a panel data. The general hypothesis in this section is that the level of risk on site has an effect on accident rates, and accident rates have an effect on economic firm performance. Our most important contribution in this field is to show evidence that supports the hypotheses that some management issues matter on risk levels. Our results show a statistically significant evidence of the relationship between the level of risk on site and accident rates. We have partially confirmed the next hypotheses about the quadratic influence between accidents rates and economic performance. The incidence of this quadratic terms suggest to be more complex than lineal relationships between those variables. This relationship gives us empirical evidence that, initially, it is possible to combine an increase in accidents with an increase of assets, but there is an inflection point where this tendency changes and more levels of accidents decrease the finally financial performance. Results are relevant to contribute to actual knowledge in this field because of two main reasons: first, considering the lack of research at task level on sites, the present research contributes to this important issue. Secondly, based on our empirical evidences, we concluded that it necessary more promotion and control by the Public Administration over the live conditions on site. This is because the companies, trying to maximize their economic results, may not find the optimal level of accidents rate, understanding this optimal level by global terms. That includes social, personal and companies interests.
