Psychological climate and accidents in an automotive plant

Abstract

Lost-time accident records for approximately 7000 employees of a tractor factory were tabulated for each of the 44 shop departments, and accident rate per 100 personnel was computed for each department. The departmental accident rates were then correlated with 10 other variables, and these other variables were also intercorrelated. The variables, which were selected on the basis of hypotheses that had been proposed, included such items as: variation in pressure to get things done, manual effort involved, and degree of incentive work. The three highest correlations obtained were with "comfortable shop environment." r = -.70, "manual effort involved," r = .47, and "degree of operational congestion," r = .45. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)