The silent transmission belt: testing safety bullying’s indirect effects on construction incident learning failures via voice suppression

Does bullying impact Learning From Incidents (LFI) in construction?

This interesting study explored bullying as an institutionalised governance mechanism, studying how it affects learning from incidents and safety voice.

A key concept is silence. Data was from 215 questionnaires.

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Extracts:

· Studies show that LFI is “often constrained by organizational barriers, including weak feedback systems and punitive safety cultures … [shaped by] not only by technical limits but also by institutional pressures and everyday safety practices”

· Rather than SB being just interpersonal, in project-based environments it may be “an institutionalized practice, such as scapegoating workers, selective enforcement of … rules, and public shaming to preserve an image of flawless safety performance”, or use of “aggressive safety audits imposed by lead contractors”

· “managers may use accountability tools to protect project reputation and client relationships, creating pressure that discourages workers from speaking up”

· Project Participant Silence (PPS) “exerts a significant and substantial effect on FLFI”

· Safety Bullying (SB) “shows no direct impact on learning outcomes but operates entirely through PPS, indicating a full mediation effect”

· “This indirect-only pattern reveals that learning failures emerge when governance-induced silence distorts feedback loops and fragments safety knowledge flows”

· “learning failures are not an immediate consequence of bullying behaviors themselves, but are closely tied to how such behaviors reshape communicative conditions within projects”

· “silence constitutes a proximal barrier to organizational learning. When safety concerns … are withheld, key learning inputs are distorted”

· “In construction settings, fear of blame, ambiguous incident definitions, and inconsistent post-report handling further intensify the disruptive role of silence … integrating Safety I and Safety II principles is particularly relevant …Safety II reframes human adaptability as a resource, shifting managerial attention from compliance enforcement to sense-making and learning in context”

· “hostile supervisory practices do not automatically translate into observable learning failures … [where] Fragmented supply chains and multilayered subcontracting can buffer the immediate impact of bullying on formal learning routines”

· And “aggressive supervision is often normalized as production pressure or site culture, reducing its visibility as a learning barrier”

· “SB undermines learning outcomes not by directly impairing cognition or procedures, but by fostering conditions in which safety-related voice is systematically suppressed”

· “PPS thus functions as the critical transmission channel linking interpersonal hostility to systemic learning”

· “Workers frequently adopt short-term self-protective strategies, tolerating SB while withholding information that could expose them to blame or retaliation”

· “Although PPS may function as an individual coping response, it simultaneously creates a collective knowledge vacuum that enables repeated safety failures”

· “The findings suggest that improving learning in construction projects requires governance redesign rather than procedural intensification”

· “Managers must transition from coercive, blame-oriented control systems toward resilience-based governance that protects voice as a strategic resource