Impact and influence of transformational leadership on construction safety culture

The success and sustainability of the safety management system in a construction organization is entirely dependent on the leadership. The leader makes or breaks the organization. There is a strong need to establish, develop, assess, sustain and improve the effectiveness of the leadership and safety management system in a construction organization. The various styles of leadership available in literature for different organizations like manufacturing, services, information technology and research and development are studied, understood and compared for advantages vis-à-vis dis-advantages to assess suitability, applicability and validity for the construction organization. The transformational style of leadership is most suitable to the sustainable safety culture. The experience of assessing and reviewing the safety management systems in the 6 large- scale infra-structure organizations at different parts of India has been utilized in designing and formulating the transformational style of leadership for the successful conception to completion of the construction activities. The impact of human, organizational and technical factors on the leadership for safety in the construction organizations is evaluated through the questionnaire survey, interviews, discussions, interactions, etc involving about 700 participants at different levels in different locations. The factors for successful leadership are identified and presented in the report.