Knowledge Diffusion to Workplace Safety and Health Improvement

Subject Areas : Business Administration

Kassu  Jilcha ¹ (Instructor, School of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering , Addis Ababa Institute of Technology, Addis Ababa University, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia)
Daniel  Kitaw ² (Professor, School of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering , Addis Ababa Institute of Technology, Addis Ababa University, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia)
Birhanu  Beshah ³ (Associate Professor, School of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering , Addis Ababa Institute of Technology, Addis Ababa University, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia)

Received: 2015-11-19 Accepted : 2016-10-13 Published : 2016-12-25

Keywords: Occupational safety, knowledge diffusion, occupational health, Knowledge Management,

Abstract :

The purpose of this study is to develop a conceptual model of Workplace safety and Health Knowledge diffusion. As workplace safety is becoming a global issue in the competitiveness of the business environment, knowledge diffusion model to workplace safety is found a mandatory tool to create awareness of the society and conceptual model is developed. Literature review was conducted in collecting data. Different journal articles were reviewed regarding occupational safety and health and knowledge diffusion. The interview and personal experiences are also included in the methodology. Finding shows that in today’s manufacturing industries, globalization and industrialization have resulted in increasing societal economic development. With this globalization effect, workplace hazards are getting increased from time to time and imposed many challenges on society. Some of them are workplace safety hazards, high costs, loss of productivity and organizational competitiveness advantage. These challenges emanated from the absence of awareness creation. The literatures finding ratifies that the global occupational safety knowledge diffusion is found to be at its infant stage. The research implementation is conceptual model development process which is an ideal for developing economies unless the awareness to the workplace safety will be conducted in line with the model. In practice, the finding solves retiring industry-university linkage, weak top management commitments and weak awareness scenario of the employees of any organization. In order to censor these workplace safety improvement hampering situations, it discloses a clue for knowledge diffusion and forward the way how to diffuse workplace safety and health knowledge. Finally, the originality/Value shows that even though existing researches contribution to workplace safety is undeniable, many of the researches overlooked the knowledge diffusion process through phase analysis model development. Therefore, this study reveals to fill the gap found in the researches.