Systematic Literature Review on Indicators Use in Safety Management Practices among Utility Industries

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The draft submitted by the authors addresses an important issue in the field of OSH. In fact, a large number of different indicators are used here to check the quality of the OSHM. A comprehensive collection, especially of leading indicators, is an important contribution to enable quality improvement.

The authors attempt to provide an overview via a systematic collection of such indicators from the literature. Likewise, they examine the quantity of the use of indicators, which they divide into lagging, observational, and leading. The focus of the analysis is rightly on the leading ones.

Although the draft gives a good overview of the indicators found and correctly estimates the results, at least within the framework of the chosen system, there are some points that should be reworked:

• Although the authors themselves point out the importance of risk management in OHS, they did not put emphasis on the findings in this field in their search. Since this large field also works with indicators, this should also be taken into account or at least justifiably excluded.
• Basically, the systematics of the search or the applied criteria are problematic. Since OHSM is logically a very application-oriented research field, or OHSM is lived in practice, the restriction to journal articles is not readily comprehensible. Especially findings from application are often published in conference proceedings, a publication in non-research articles is also very well possible. At the same time, it would probably make sense to continue the search explicitly in guidelines and standards. This problem is reflected in the interpretation of the number of publications and the corresponding countries.
• The small number of papers found makes quantitative statements and conclusions problematic. As described above, a modified search system could strongly influence these results.

Author Response

1. The draft submitted by the authors addresses an important issue in the field of OSH. In fact, a large number of different indicators are used here to check the quality of the OSHM. A comprehensive collection, especially of leading indicators, is an important contribution to enable quality improvement.

Ans: Thanks for the review. Much appreciated

 

2. The authors attempt to provide an overview via a systematic collection of such indicators from the literature. Likewise, they examine the quantity of the use of indicators, which they divide into lagging, observational, and leading. The focus of the analysis is rightly on the leading ones.

Ans: Thanks for the review. Much appreciated.

 

3. Although the draft gives a good overview of the indicators found and correctly estimates the results, at least within the framework of the chosen system, there are some points that should be reworked:
   1. Although the authors themselves point out the importance of risk management in OHS, they did not put emphasis on the findings in this field in their search. Since this large field also works with indicators, this should also be taken into account or at least justifiably excluded.

Ans: Thanks for the review. Unfortunately, risk management was understudied in the selected paper and it was been discussed in limitation and challange. However, we have revise and adding some explaination in the discussion (line: 1577 -1588).

 

1. Basically, the systematics of the search or the applied criteria are problematic. Since OHSM is logically a very application-oriented research field, or OHSM is lived in practice, the restriction to journal articles is not readily comprehensible. Especially findings from application are often published in conference proceedings, a publication in non-research articles is also very well possible. At the same time, it would probably make sense to continue the search explicitly in guidelines and standards. This problem is reflected in the interpretation of the number of publications and the corresponding countries.

Ans: Thanks for the review. We have inserted the finding on this matter in 4.1 Current Practices and Progress that is “The studies found that researchers from the selected papers focus on practical research. It has been shown that seven leading indicators in driven leading indicators were based on a standard such as ANSI Z10, ISO 45001 and Occupational Safety and Health Administrator guidelines. Safety outcomes proposed by researchers are also in line with the standards and regulations in a particular country which have also been used by ILO in capturing data regarding on occupational safety and health issues. Thus, showing that current research was base on practical and industrial oriented.”.

 

1. The small number of papers found makes quantitative statements and conclusions problematic. As described above, a modified search system could strongly influence these results.

Ans: We agreed that the number of finalist papers for review is too small due to the importance of the quality paper selected. The database chosen were among the most widely used globally by the researcher. One of the reasons the paper selected for review is little is that most of the papers on indicators of safety and health were published in low index journals with limited readers. Our study also focus on utilities industries which most of the studies were focusing in construction industries.

 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Overall, this is an interesting systematic review that addresses a gap in knowledge. However, there are several things about the manuscript that are unclear. Please see general and specific comments below:

Lines 82-83: Language a little too colloquial

Search engines: Scopus and Web of Science are great. Why was PubMed, Embase or CINAHL also not used? PubMed is one of the biggest ones used in Western nations.

Figure 1: If there were 804 articles identified and 788 duplicates were removed, why were 321 records still screened? Please double check numbers on PRISMA figure to make sure it logically adds up because right now it does not.

Section 2.1.1. When was the identification started? Month and year. Important for context.

Section 2.2. How many people did the quality appraisal? One or two? Ideally two. If two, how was disagreement between categories addressed?

Lines 138-139: By attentively does this mean reading the full-text article? Should just say that.

Line 148: Use term "sub-indicators" here but above use "sub-themes." Pick one and be consistent throughout paper.

Line 169: Can just say figure and cite figure number or table number.

Line 172-173: Information on when the timeframe of the systematic review was conducted should be stated earlier. Also, most systematic reviews take on average a year to conduct. How long was the entire process of this systematic review?

Table 3: Please use X's instead of slash marks on this Table. It is difficult to quickly scan/read. Since some are the same country from same year, would be helpful to at least put name of first author, like Smith et al. (2019). If it is the same author for both then Smith et al. (2019a), USA and Smith et al. (2019b), USA

Figure 2: Do not necessarily think numbers are needed above each point since the y-axis is pretty clear and only goes from 0-6.

Figure 3: This graph has no y-axis. Need to label, then can remove the numbers at the top of each bar.

Line 197-198: Confused by this sentence. Should say "Leading indicators were measured as passive, objective, and subjective" or if it was through passive, objective and subjective then what?

Section 3.2. Should this say “Driving leading indicators”?

Line 262: "....are detailed in Table 4."

Table 4: Why is this table 1.5 or double spaced? Beginning of all sentences should be capitalized. The way it is formatted right now is very distracting. No need to place in brackets for Reference numbers.

Lines 382-394: Do any of the articles discuss transformational leadership? This is widely recognized as beneficial to safety climate.

Section 4.2. Limitations and challenges - To me, most important section in pointing out limitations of current literature and what gaps remain/what future research in this area still needs to address. Spend a lot of time in this manuscript synthesizing/summarizing but more needs to be focused on critically appraising.

Prior to Conclusions, would the authors like to state any limitations of their systematic review? For example, the lack of inclusion of articles in English?

Conclusions: First paragraph is unnecessary because it is stated in various ways above and in the abstract.

 

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx