Citation

Becher H, Dollard MF, Smith P, Li J. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2018; 15(3): e15030415.

Affiliation

Institute of Occupational, Social and Environmental Medicine, Centre for Health and Society, Faculty of Medicine, University of Düsseldorf, Universitätsstraße 1, 40225 Düsseldorf, Germany. Jian.Li@uni-duesseldorf.de.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2018, MDPI: Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute)

DOI

10.3390/ijerph15030415

PMID

29495533

Abstract

Circulatory diseases (CDs) (including myocardial infarction, angina, stroke or hypertension) are among the leading causes of death in the world. In this paper, we explore for the first time the impact of a specific aspect of organizational climate, Psychosocial Safety Climate (PSC), on CDs. We used two waves of interview data from Australia, with an average lag of 5 years (excluding baseline CDs, finaln= 1223). Logistic regression was conducted to estimate the prospective associations between PSC at baseline on incident CDs at follow-up. It was found that participants in low PSC environments were 59% more likely to develop new CD than those in high PSC environments. Logistic regression showed that PSC at baseline predicts lower CD risk at follow-up (OR = 0.98, 95% CI 0.96-1.00) and this risk remained unchanged even after additional adjustment for known job design risk factors (effort reward imbalance and job strain). These results suggest that PSC is an independent risk factor for CDs in Australia. Beyond job design this study implicates organizational climate and prevailing management values regarding worker psychological health as the genesis of CDs.

Language: en

Keywords

Demand-Control; Psychosocial Safety Climate; circulatory diseases; effort-reward imbalance; psychosocial risks