International Journal of Business and Social Science,  Vol. 7, No. 11; November 2016 

Applying TQM Principles in Safety Management 

A Study on the Effectiveness of Total Safety Management 

Abstract 

In the light of Total Quality Management (TQM) principles, some safety management theorists have drawn an analogy and put forward different Total Safety Management (TSM) models in hope of achieving a major lapforward in safety management. However, sharing the same drawbacks of TQM, the theoretical base of Total Safety Management (TSM) has not been adequately explained. Moreover, the effectiveness of TSM in improving safety performance is largely unexplored. This article re-interprets TQM principles in safety management terms and investigates the correlation between TSM principles and safety performance through conducting a survey in Hong Kong construction industry. Survey results indicate that some of the proposed TSM principles have a positive association with safety performance. 

Keywords: Safety, TQM, Total Safety Management, construction, Performance.