Determinants influencing Safety Risks for Multinational Teams in the Netherlands.

Abstract

This thesis addresses the issue of diverse nationalities at work and deriving safety risks within multinational teams. Using an online survey questionnaire, this study has examined safety risks among Dutch based multinational teams. The overall question to be answered was to what extent these teams’ workplace safety was affected by language proficiency of the corporate language (i.e. English), uncertainty avoidance, leadership style and safety consciousness. A comparison with a parallel research study allowed the inclusion of work environment as an additional variable. The findings suggest that language proficiency in English reduces safety risks for Dutch employees, and that younger natives (Dutch) are more vulnerable to safety risks than older migrants. In addition, the comparison with the parallel research study revealed that work environment plays a vital role in workplace safety. Multinational teams performing construction work are more involved in accidents at work than multinational teams with office jobs. These findings are particularly valuable for management as they provide evidence about predictors of safety risks for multinational work teams which should support firms in improving their workplace safety.