1. Introduction
The Saudi construction industry is considered a significant indicator of trends in the health of the national economy [
1], being the largest recipient of government expenditure during the first three national development plans from 1970 to 1985 and exceeding 49% of the total government expenditures [
2]. The significance of the construction industry includes the delivery of the infrastructure needed by other industries, reflecting the country’s economic development level [
3]. Hence, the construction industry is considered to be amongst the most dangerous industries worldwide, in which the relationship between construction projects and safety risks and hazards shows a positive correlation [
4,
5]. Thus, the rate of accidents and deaths continues to increase due to continuous rises in the production of the construction industry [
4], with high levels of accidents and death ratios in relation to other industries [
6]. Thus, onsite safety involves ensuring the security of workers’ lives, making its implementation essential in construction projects [
7]. Proceedings display that the number of occupational injuries in the Saudi construction industry between the years 2015 and 2020 was 17,299 cases with statuses including under treatment, cured, disability, and death [
8]. Catastrophic accidents happen due to the underestimation of safety risks and the poor recognition of hazards [
9]. Safety risks can be prevented through the presence of safety practices, procedures, and guidelines as essential elements for the survival and wellbeing of construction industry personnel. Still, the development of occupational safety and health principles from an organizational standpoint is a major focus of worldwide concern [
10]. Therefore, both regulators and construction firms should arrange and verify the awareness of safety through implementation on sites [
6]. Kilmacka presented the interpretation of the principles of occupational safety and health in the approach of quality management principles, which was the theoretical basis of the research [
11].
Total quality management (TQM) is broadly perceived as a performance-improving program [
12]. Deming defined quality as conformance to specification and being free from deficiencies [
13]. Increasingly, economic and market globalization has indicated the important role of TQM and its associated standards [
14]. Further, quality is an inclusive concept that embraces entire organizational features such as the involvement of all staff members in continuous improvement and the integration the quality principles into organizational culture [
15]. TQM has been considered to be one of the major tools in management practice over the last decade [
16] in manufacturing and service industries [
17], as well as its benefits to the construction industry [
18]. Implementing TQM can promote quality as a whole and improve business performance [
19]. All improvement actions applied at firms to improve development are either direct (e.g., process organization) or indirect (e.g., work safety) [
20]. Much research has been performed regarding the implementation of TQM; it is perceived that the benefits include higher customer satisfaction, better quality products, and higher market shares by construction companies [
17]. Iqbal and Asrar-ul-Haq studied the relationship between TQM practices and employee performance in a dynamic technological region in Pakistan [
21]. Amin et al. showed that TQM concepts had significant relationships with employee satisfaction [
22]. In addition, Panuwatwanich found a significant influence of TQM on the performance of Vietnamese construction firms [
18]. Goetsch and Davis stated that “total quality in reference with is an approach to doing business that attempts to maximize the competitiveness of an organization through the continuous improvement of the quality of its products, services, people, processes, and environments”, for which TQM contained eleven critical key elements [
23]. Most of all, TQM definitions include a reference that is applied to its “soft” and “hard” sides [
24], in which the “soft” side is related to elements such as leadership, employee empowerment, training and education, employee involvement, and teamwork [
25,
26]. The soft elements of TQM concern factors that directly affect people and may come from other soft elements [
26]. Kilmacka and Matevz assessed the level of occupational health and safety based on the basic principles of quality management interpreted by [
27]; therefore, the key principles of TQM used in this research are customer orientation, leadership, employee involvement, process approach, system approach to quality management, continuous improvement, and determining decisions based on facts. Then, these key principles are theoretically framed by the TBL.
The triple bottom line (TBL) is a philosophy that has dimensions representing sustainable development and is recognized and identified by interlinked interactions at three major dimensions, including the environment (planet), society (people), and economy (profit) [
28]. The implementation of the TBL has been a successful approach for the sustainable development of firms, promoting economic growth and supporting environmental and social awareness [
29]. Amponsah-Tawiah interpreted sustainable development as utilizing resources ideally in all respects [
30]. The simultaneous integration of these three elements is required to determine sustainable development in the built environment effectively [
31]. Therefore, the construction industry can be considered one of the most notable in sustainable development because it has a crucial influence on the TBL [
32], and is critical to the sustainable development framework, affecting the three dimensions of the TBL: social, economic, and environmental [
33]. The social dimension involves community participation, fair wages, and employee relations, with emphasis on the interaction between the firm in question and society [
34]. The social dimension indicates the necessity for implementing beneficial and fair practices for work, society, and human capital, providing value to society, such as health insurance and fair wages [
35]. The environmental dimension directly follows the generation of practices that preserve environmental resources from hazards, where environmentally sustainable firms should be practicing sustainability, such as the safe disposal of toxic waste [
36]. Lastly, the economic dimension represents the impact of firm work practices on the economic system [
37], emphasizing the economic value that the firm provides to surrounding systems [
34]. Akanmu et al. revealed the significance of implementing TQM practices in organizations, considering it a key factor for increasing sustainability and achieving competitive advantage in the food industry [
38], as well as Ho, who validated sustainable development through TQM [
39].
Despite the advantage gained from the application of TQM in construction companies, the influence of TQM on OSH in the Saudi construction industry appears uncertain. In addition, TQM benefits to the construction industry are still unclear [
40]. The Saudi construction industry is one of the sectors in which work injuries happen in abundance, recording the highest percentage of work injuries in the Saudi labor market. This sector has accounted for nearly 50% of work-related injuries in the last five years, and awareness plays a key role in promoting interest in OSH systems and practices. The most common risk factors affecting OSH in the Saudi construction industry are falling from a height, collisions of moving equipment, things falling, the collapse of trenches and excavations, scaffolding collapses, rubs or scrapes, and heat [
41]. The research covering the topic of OSH in a Saudi construction context includes the study by Haadir and Panuwatwanich, who identified the critical factors affecting the successful implementation of safety programs [
42], and that by Khasawneh, who investigated improving occupational health and workplace safety [
43]. Mosely and Makki revealed the factors influencing safety climate perceptions [
44] and explored the key components of determinants for the evaluation of the safety climate [
45]. Almasoud established the national OSH standards at his institute [
46]. Furthermore, the Occupational Safety and Health Department at the HRSD developed guidelines for the construction industry to enhance the awareness of the importance of adhering to OSH practices to create a safe and healthy work environment to save lives, property, and the environment from risks surrounding the work environment and to reduce the rate of work-related injuries and deaths [
41].
Sanni-Anibire et al. investigated construction workers’ perceptions regarding OSH conditions in the eastern province of Saudi Arabia. The highest performing categories were the safety support climate, safety support activities, and organization climate, while management involvement, employee, and supervisor participation were the lowest performing categories [
47]. Additionally, Erogul and Alyami explored construction workers’ perceptions regarding the construction site safety climate in Najran, the southern province of Saudi Arabia. The results revealed a lack of adherence to occupational health and safety regulations by employers, a need for construction site safety protocols and enhanced external inspection systems, an unawareness among participants in regard to the safety measures endorsed by their companies, and indications of leniency due to favoritism by external inspectors [
48]. Moosa et al. investigated the factors causing accidents in Saudi Arabian construction companies. The three most important factors of poor safety performance were the firms’ top leaders, lack of training, and the reckless operation of equipment [
49]. Thus, the Ministry of Municipal and Rural Affairs and Housing (MOMRAH) issued the Classification Points Program (CPP) in order to develop and improve services in the construction sector. The objective of the CPP is to monitor the quality of the sector’s work, divide construction sector facilities, raise compliance with performance quality standards, and follow up on the extent to which the facility classification scores are in line with the project implementation by linking field violations to the points program system [
50]. The SBP has an instruction manual to service the quality inspection of contractors’ commitment to classification. The instruction manual has checklists that include general safety requirements, safety requirements in the workplace, site security requirements, environmental safety requirements, and occupational health requirements [
51].
Nevertheless, the literature review indicates that limited work has thus far covered OSH in construction companies implementing TQM in the context of Saudi Arabia. Endeavors to improve OSH in construction companies by applying managerial philosophy such as TQM would facilitate governmental initiatives, thereby becoming a role model for different sizes and types of construction companies. The purpose of this study was to explore the influence of total quality management (TQM) application on improving occupational safety and health (OSH) within the context of Saudi construction companies.
2. Materials and Methods
The authors used a qualitative approach of a combination of primary and secondary sources, as illustrated in
Figure 1. The secondary source was a comprehensive structured review regarding OSH in construction, TQM, and the TBL. The primary source was semistructured interviews (SSIs) as shown in
Appendix A. The structured review included synthesizing relevant research topics, including TQM, OSH, and sustainable development concepts in the form of the triple bottom line (TBL) framework.
Figure 2 depicts the framework of the triple bottom line (TBL) approach.
Figure 3 depicts a schematic framework of the viewpoints of the occupational, safety, health, and environmental aspects. Interviews are a common tool for gathering data and are very useful for quantitative question studies that have been widely used in the built environment [
52]. Interviews include the use of open-ended questions or topics designed before data are collected; thus, SSIs are considered one of the most effective and convenient methods of collecting qualitative scientific data [
53].
Further, data regarding work injuries were gathered from the Saudi Contracting Authorities [
8];
Table 1 shows the distribution of injuries in the Saudi construction industry in the last five years, including the classification of injury types and revealing the decrease in work site injuries since 2016.
Table 2 shows the load of each injury number according to company type, including large, medium, and small.
However, the relevant research regarding quality management and safety management in manufacturing and service industries [
11,
27] revealed that seven principles of quality management can be converted into the context of occupational safety and health management, as shown in
Table 3. Further, Panuwatwanich and Nguyen [
18] investigated the Vietnamese construction context based on seven principles of TQM, including leadership management, training, employee relations, quality data and reporting, supplier quality management, project design, and process management [
18]. Thus, the seven principles of TQM were used in the formation of the OSH management principles. Thus, this study was limited to the seven principles of TQM that were applied earlier in relevant construction safety studies, as shown in
Table 3.
Occupational safety and health factors in construction industries have been reviewed, including the Saudi construction industry. Mosely reviewed and described eighteen factors from the previous literature that influenced the safety climate at construction project sites [
6]. This study divided the OSH factors into TQM principles, then adopted the (TBL) approach as the theoretical framework. Srivastava et al. used the TBL to assess sustainability in construction projects. Section A in the SSI includes questions regarding company specialties, TQM applications, levels of TQM applications, types of OSH standards applied, and levels of annual work injuries. Section B presents semistructured interview questions on OSH factors with regard to social, environmental, and economical factors [
54].
The authors of this study applied the exploratory method approach. The grounded theory is often heralded as revolutionary in the history of qualitative traditions [
55]; therefore, it was used to analyze the manuscripts of interviews. A context analysis based on the constructivist grounded theory was performed using Nvivo software. The first level of coding was sorting the data to categorize the codes and generate themes based on the relationships between the codes, code frequencies, and meanings across the codes. Further, the second level of coding contained focused coding, axial coding, and theoretical coding. Examination of the initial codes was performed consistently with the identifying relationships. For the identification of the most frequent or significant initial codes, focused coding was applied. Axial coding was used to identify the core category and related categories. Ultimately, theoretical coding was used to connect the core category and related categories to create a storyline that should explain the phenomenon in terms of the thematic factors, as shown in
Table 4.
A selection of indicator interviewees was considered. Technically, construction safety and health is mainly related to general stakeholder contractors. However, this research focused on the perception of general contractors in regard to measuring the influence of TQM applications on OSH in the context of Saudi Arabia. Thus, 32 firms were invited to participate in this study, and 15 firms were confirmed to participate according to the TQM applications in their firms. The participants in the study included seven general contractors, four subcontractors, and four specialized subcontractors from Riyadh, Jeddah, and the eastern region of Saudi Arabia. The regions are considered the largest sectors that drive the majority of construction projects in Saudi Arabia. The interview details are shown in
Table 4.
3. Results
As explained in the
Section 2, the SSIs included two sections. Section A represented five aspects of TQM application. Participants who answered NO to the question regarding TQM application were excluded. Out of the thirty-two invitations to participate, and requiring experience in TQM, only fifteen participants in construction companies were willing to participate in this research. The participants included general contractors (46%), specialized subcontractors (27%), and subcontractors (27%), as shown in
Figure 4. The levels of TQM application were similar, with 53% high, 34% medium, and 13% low, as shown in
Figure 5. Further, the types of TQM standards used were local (27%) and international (73%) (
Figure 6). Additionally, regarding the annual work injuries, 53% accounted for fewer than 10 cases, 27% between 11 and 20 cases, and 20% accounted for more than 21 cases, as shown in
Figure 7.
The interviews with the practitioners focused on three themes—(I) social, (II) environmental, and (III) economical—as well as how these themes could be effective factors to ensure the influence of TQM application in OSH determinants within Saudi construction companies.
The participants represented three types of construction companies, including general contractors (GCs), specialized subcontractors (SSs), and subcontractors (SuBs).
Table 5 shows the general backgrounds of the participants. The general contractor participants had the highest level of experience in total quality management with more than fifteen years, whereas specialized subcontractor and subcontractor participants had different ranges of experience with more than ten years.
Further, in a cross-case analysis, as illustrated in
Figure 8, data from one interview were compared with those from another in order to identify the key similarities and differences and to allow patterns, trends, and relationships to emerge. Eisenhardt and Graebner explained the theories that emerged and were developed through the recognition of patterns of the relationships among the themes within and across interviews, as well as their fundamental logical arguments [
56]. Therefore, the data were categorized as low, medium, and high based on their objective occurrence in the following domain scales, as shown in
Table 6 and
Figure 8.
The findings are presented in
Table 7 and show that a major frequency was established. The thematic factors were categorized as well. The total frequency was 214, and each factor repetition was loaded depending on the total frequency to provide the percentage of each factor. Thus, six influenced social factors, four influenced environmental factors, and four influenced economic factors were reported, including the frequency, percentage of frequency, and scale depending on the cross-case analysis.