Abstract:
Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) is an important aspect in every type of organisations. Healthy
workers are an important asset to the organisation and safety issues causes various losses to the
organisation. Therefore, it is vital to formulate strategies to improve the occupational health and
safety in every type of organisations.
It has been found out that 80% of the workplace accidents are due to employee behaviours. Moreover,
according to past researches, ethical climate of the organisation affects the individual employee
behaviours. Ethical climate refers to the shared perceptions of organisational members regarding
what is considered correct behaviour in the organisation and how the organisation deals with ethical
issues. Ethical climate guides the employees to determine what is considered right and wrong
behaviour at work. Therefore, it is much clear that there is a strong link between ethical climates and
the workplace safety.
Thus, this study discusses how the ethical climates affect the employees’ work place safety behaviours
and ultimately on the occupational health and safety. The literature review shows that among the nine
types of ethical climates, principal-local climates and benevolent- local climates have the highest
positive effect on workplace safety behaviours. Therefore, the organisations should encourage these
types of ethical climates in their organisations and can enhance the safety performance by aligning
their safety initiatives with ethical climates.
