Citation

Hashemian SM, Triantis K. Safety Sci. 2023; 159: e106045.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2023, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.ssci.2022.106045

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

As two organizational priorities, production and safety goals are usually regarded at opposite ends of the enterprise performance spectrum. In organizations, stakeholders are required to maintain equilibrium between these two conflicting goals during their decision-making processes. However, day-to-day pressures toward increasing production to survive in an increasingly aggressive, competitive environment usually result in changing the balance between the two, valuing production over safety. Pressures from production demands, which are commonly referred to as production pressure, are consistently recognized by the literature as one of the major contributing factors to accidents. Due to the vital importance of this issue, therefore, the concept of production pressure has received considerable attention. A number of theoretical researchers with different disciplinary backgrounds have contributed to the literature through their conceptual extensions of theories around the topic of production pressure. Many empirical studies have also added to the literature by analyzing the issues arising from increasing production pressure in the working environment and its relationship to safety at work. Yet, the empirical literature still suffers from a lack of reliance on safety theories to guide the research, leading to inconsistent use of terms, definitions, measures, and results. This paper explores both the theoretical and empirical literature associated with the concept of production pressure, aiming to bridge the theory-practice gap in this area to initiate a dialogue between theoretical and real-world research. To achieve this, we systematically reviewed 181 peer-reviewed articles whose core focus is directly or indirectly related to production pressure. We first provide a brief explanation of some of the key features of several relevant conceptual frameworks. Then, we provide a comprehensive review of the empirical literature, which is mostly focused on the effects of production pressure in sociotechnical systems. Furthermore, we present several potential future research directions, including the operationalization of a proper monitoring system to control production pressure in the workplace. This study provides a comprehensive understanding of the concept of production pressure for novices and provides background information for experienced researchers in the field to help them select appropriate research methodologies and directions.

Language: en

Keywords

Accidents; Organization; Production pressure; Safety; Sociotechnical systems