Motivation to maintain high levels of safety in jobs where a priority is placed on avoiding failure: Construction, measure, and relationship with the self-worth sufficiency model

Organizations require employees to work safely; they must perform their occupations in a safe manner in order to avoid human errors or incidents. However, there is a dearth of empirical research that examines the motivation to adhere to safety standards as an antecedent for employees’ safety behaviors. The purpose of this study was to develop a scale that would measure the motivation to work safely and examine the self-worth sufficiency model as a source of this motivation in medical and health organizations. Items associated with safety motivation were developed based on Neal and Griffin’s (2006) work on a prior scale. A survey (n = 558) in Study 1 demonstrated that an exploratory factor analysis revealed five factors: accomplishment, competition, cooperation, learning, and new safetyoriented motivation. These results suggested that safety-oriented motivation was distinct from achievement-oriented motivation. Furthermore, a different survey (n = 517) showed that pride and a sense of social contribution had a strong effect on the motivation to work safely. Study 2 evaluated the effect of the self-worth sufficiency model as a source of work motivation and identified that this effect was particularly salient in jobs in which the avoidance of failure is paramount. Taken together, this series of studies highlighted the self-worth sufficiency model’s potential in improving employees motivation to work safely, especially for jobs in which the avoidance of failure is paramount.