Abstract:  The continuous development of innovative science and technology makes the elements of safety management system increasingly complex and difficult to master and has been in a state of dynamic and continuous updating. Based on cognitive science theory, this paper combines safety research with innovation research, and attempts to explore a new way to improve organizational safety performance from the perspective of safety innovation. In previous safety management, most of the business operators and managers refused to innovate in the field of safety management in order to “avoid” risks, because they believed” doing less, making less mistakes". Hofmann (2003) is a pioneer to initiate safety innovation behavior in an organization from the perspective of human to promote the performance of safety. However, since then, the research on safety innovation behavior has not been profoundly studied. How to start safety innovation behavior and whether safety innovation behavior affects organizational safety performance have not been solved yet. Therefore, this study focuses on team safety innovation behavior and explores how to initiate safety innovation behavior within enterprises.
Specifically, this paper puts forward a model of organizational safety performance affected by safety innovation intention through safety innovation behavior. Safety innovation intention represents the motivation and intensity of innovation willingness to work in a safer way to enhance safety. Safety performance refers to themeasurable results of an organization’s safety management system, which is related to the safety risk control of an organization, based on the enterprise’s safety policies and objectives. Only when the team employees have a strong desire for safety innovation, will they actively collect all kinds of information about improving safety level, be more sensitive to safety innovation resources and integrate them, so as to promote the development of team safety performance. Safety innovation resources also have an important impact on safety behavior and safety performance. There are 4 dimensions of safety innovation resources: (1) human capital, it can reduce the incidence of accidents caused by human factors in enterprise safety production, and improve the performance of enterprise safety management by absorbing and cultivating employees with safety awareness and safety capabilities (such as safety skills, responsibility, risk awareness, etc.) (2) equipment and technology, they can reduce the error rate of human factors in production process by assisting and early warning, and provide technical guarantee for safety production (3) management and organizational resources, they play a leading role in the safety production of enterprises, formulating strategic plans for safety, carrying out total quality management for the whole process, and strengthening system safety (4) safety culture, as a common consensus on safety innovation within the organization, safety culture can discover the potential dangers in safety management in time through the constraints of employees’ behavior so as to improve the safety performance of enterprises. The overall safety intention of the team can promote the safety innovation behavior of employees and improve the safety performance of the team; abundant safety innovation resources can also provide more opportunities for team members to conduct safety innovation-related behavior, and further help the team to improve safety performance.
This paper took chemical and civil explosive enterprises as the research objects. Their business included blasting engineering, production of explosive materials, chemical industry, mining and other high-risk industries. The respondents were senior managers and safety specialists of enterprises. In this study, 32 teams from 21 enterprises across 7 provinces were randomly selected. A total of 460 questionnaires were distributed, among which 442 were valid, and the validity of the questionnaires was 96%. In this paper, Amos22 and SPSS21.0 were used as statistical analysis software to analyze and process the data. The results show that: (1) employee’s safety innovation intention is an important factor affecting the internal safety innovation behavior; (2) the support of organizational safety resources will also promote the internal safety innovation behavior; (3) safety innovation behavior plays an intermediary role between safety innovation intention/safety innovation resources and organizational safety performance. Similarly, safety innovation intention and safety innovation resources can respectively promote organizational safety performance through safety innovation behavior.
This study has important theoretical and practical significance in the current environment. Firstly, it is necessary to enhance the safety innovation intention of managers and employees. Relatively rigid system, backward thinking, traditional production and operation mode will inevitably lead to severe security problems in high-risk industries. To enhance the safety innovation intention of managers and employees in high-risk industries is to treat safety issues from a dynamic perspective and to actively put forward new ideas in the face of safety issues. Secondly, we should strengthen the resources for safety innovation: to improve the safety of production process through advanced production technology, safer production materials and equipment; to make effective changes in management system through continuous optimization of the system; to strengthen the construction of organizational safety innovation. Through the penetration of cultural concepts, managers and employees can meet a common understanding of safety innovation, which has a positive impact on their attitude and behavior in safety performance. To the best of our knowledge, our study is the first one that considers a safety innovation model. The support for the mediating role of safety innovation behavior not only adds to our understanding of the role of safety behavior in relationship between safety innovation intention and safety performance, but also implies the complicated role of behavior plays between the intention-performance relationships in safety area. We hope the supportive results reported in our study will stimulate further research in areas of safety innovation intention,safety innovation behavior and safety performance to help meet the unanticipated challenges now and in the future.

Key words: safety innovation, safety innovation intention, safety performance, cognitive science theory