The Effect Of Managerial Overconfidence On Safety Performance In Space Constraint: The Mediating Role Of Safety Climate And Moderating Role Of Risk Perception

With the rapid development of modernization and urbanization in China,projects have become more and more extensive and complex,so that accidents happening become a problem.And accidents are one of the important factors that affect the smooth implementation of spaceconstrained large-scale complex projects.In the early stage of safety management research,scholars believed that the improvement of work equipment and operating technology were the cores when we try to improve safety performance.However,due to the diminishing marginal benefits in “hardware” investment,the focus of scholars’ research gradually shifted to soft environments’(such as organizational factors,The impact of supervision,employee mental status,etc.)impact on project safety performance.This study focuses on managerial overconfidence and safety performance,conducts research on project safety management from a new perspective,and meanwhile proposes some suggestions for project safety management.Managers should realize that their own cognitive biases will be reflected through the formulation and implementation of safety rules,and also through the role of social exchanges.Transmitting through the communications between managers and employees,and between employers and employees,the effect will influence safety climate,and further affect the ultimate safety performance.Therefore,it is necessary to have a sense of danger in times of peace,recognize that although overconfidence is the general quality of managers,they must have a sense of risk and be vigilant to any possible accidents all the time.Managers can consciously focus on their own attitudes,keep adjusting the bias of self-recognizing to avoid overconfidence,reduce the negative impacts on the attitude and behavior of construction workers,and diminish the negative effects on safety performance.Project managers should be aware that although it is difficult to completely avoid security problems at present,they can use some targeted measures to deal with them.Based on the theory of cognitive bias and accidental causes,this paper constructs a research discusses the relationship and potential influence between managerial overconfidence and safety performance.This research focuses on how project managers’ overconfidence affects safety outcome through mediating role of safety climate(management safety commitment and social support).First,this paper verifies the negative effect of managerial overconfidence to safety climate,and also the negative effect of safety climate on safety performance.It shows that managerial overconfidence has both direct and indirect negative effect on safety performance.Based on the analysis of main effects,this paper further studies the influence of risk perception on managerial overconfidence and safety performance relationship in the space-constrained context and provides practical suggestions for project safety management.The study used data from 292 front-line employees from 22 projects to test the hypothesis.The results showed that(1)managerial overconfidence was significantly negatively correlated with safety performance.(2)The security atmosphere plays a partial intermediary role in the relationship between managerial overconfidence and safety performance.(3)Risk perception can weaken the negative influences of managerial overconfidence on safety performance.There are three innovative points in this paper.(1)This paper applies cognitive bias theory to project management,starting from the perspective of manager themselves,to a new perspective of safety management research.(2)We explore the factors of organizational management in safety management.Dig deeply to study the impact of managerial overconfidence on the safety performance of the project and find the explanation mechanism of “managerial overconfidence--safety climate--safety performance”.The research finds that managerial cognitive biases do have a negative impact on project safety performance.However,in space-constrained scenarios,employees’ risk perceptions can weaken such negative effects.(3)This paper proposes new ideas for the measure of managerial overconfidence.There are no fixed scales or models for measurement of managerial overconfidence.The measurement methods proposed by past scholars are often more applicable to listed companies with detailed information available or managers highly regarded by the media.We believe that the measurement ideas presented here can be applied not only to project managers but also to the measurement of overconfidence by medium-sized and small enterprises managers or team leaders.