An Analysis of Thematic Structure of Research Trends in Occupational Health and Safety Concerning Safety Culture and Environmental Management

Occupational health and safety is one of the most important domains of research for industries and organisations because of its direct and indirect benefits. Safety performance is a crucial indicator of an organisation's commitment and brand value and is perceived to be dependent on many predictors, such as safety culture, human factors, and employee behaviours. Environmental safety is another crucial component. This article analyses the literature on occupational health and safety, predominantly focusing on the inclusion of safety performance and environmental management between 1991 and 2018, using quantitative, visualisation, and clustering techniques. The data was drawn from Clarivate Analytics' Web of Science Core Collection in May 2019. The BibExcel and HistCite (TM) software were used to establish an intellectual structure based on the 289 articles retrieved. The articles' co-citation analysis and historiograph were prepared to understand the trend, linkage, development over time, and association of studies. The clustering of the articles was done at two levels: one for the top-counted TCS-30 articles, and the other for the top-cited 101 articles with minimum seven citations. This clustering helped in understanding the diffusion of knowledge and establishing conceptual dynamics across the research domain. The aim was to identify the local main path and any gaps. Five clusters were obtained from the top TCS-30 articles and ten were obtained from the K-Mean clustering analysis. The core papers and authors in the field were defined from the citation findings. A chronological network of trend evolution across the domain, linking performance and environment, was suggested. The findings suggest the inclusion of environmental safety aspects as an integral component in future studies for measuring and evaluating safety performance and occupational safety research more efficiently. (C) 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.