Theoretical Development and Empirical Testing of a Socio-Technical Systems Model for Manufacturing Safety in Nigerian Industry

This dissertation develops and empirically tests a novel socio-technical systems model for manufacturing safety in Nigerian industrial contexts, advancing safety science theory by accounting for the distinctive social, institutional, and technical characteristics of manufacturing workplaces in a developing country setting. Prevailing socio-technical safety models, including Rasmussen's risk management framework and Leveson's STAMP model, embed assumptions about regulatory enforcement effectiveness, technical system reliability, and organisational management maturity that are incompatible with the realities of many Nigerian manufacturing environments, creating a theoretical fidelity gap that limits both research accuracy and practical intervention design. The model development process integrates a systematic review of socio-technical safety literature, a constructivist grounded theory study drawing on one hundred and thirty-one interviews across nineteen manufacturing firms in Ogun, Kaduna, Rivers, Imo, and Kogi states, and a quantitative validation survey administered to seven hundred and forty manufacturing workers. The resulting Nigerian Manufacturing Safety Systems model introduces original constructs including informal safety social capital, regulatory arbitrage behaviour, and emergency community response networks as socio-technical safety system components absent from international models. Multilevel confirmatory factor analysis establishes construct validity and structural equation modelling confirms hypothesised relationships in the nomological network. Keywords: socio-technical systems, manufacturing safety, grounded theory, multilevel modelling, Nigeria