How Do Firms Develop Safety Management Capabilities? The Impact of Institutional Forces and Digital Technology Resources

In the digital age, industrial firms are facing significant challenges in achieving digitally-enabled safety management (DSM, i.e., leveraging digital technologies to mitigate industrial accidents) due to rigid institutional structures and underutilized digital technology resources. To address this, we develop a research model integrating institutional theory and resource-based view theory, and position safety management capabilities (i.e., the abilities of a firm to sense, seize, and reconfigure its safety operational routines and deploy new ones for DSM) as a pivotal process mechanism translating institutional forces (i.e., institutional isomorphism and top management support for DSM) and digital technology resources (i.e., digital technologies that are available and utilized for DSM) into improved safety performance. Using time-lagged survey data in combination with secondary data from 216 industrial firms in China, our findings reveal that institutional isomorphism and top management support exert cascading influences on safety management capabilities. The alignment of digital technology resources with institutional forces significantly facilitates the development of safety management capabilities, emphasizing their synergistic role in fostering adaptive and strategic safety practices. Furthermore, safety management capabilities serve as the critical intermediary enabling institutional and resource factors to drive superior safety outcomes. Our results advance the theory of safety management and provide actionable insights for industrial firms to effectively operationalize DSM.