Jinnah Business Review July 2021, Vol. 9, No. 2, pp. 15-33 Safety Management Practices and Occupational Health and Safety Performance: An Empirical Review Muhammad Ajmal * 1 , Ahmad Shahrul Nizam Isha 2 & Shahrina Md Nordin 3 1,2,3 Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS, Perak, Malaysia Abstract. This paper aims to investigate how the relationship between safety management practices and occupational health and safety performance have been examined in the litera- ture, and which future research areas can be recommended. This systematic literature review applied the matrix method to examine major literature in safety management practices and occupational health and safety performance. A total of 24 papers in English peer-reviewed from 21 journals were selected and analyzed. The synthesis of these empirical studies revealed the following: The relationship between safety management practices and occupational health and safety performance has mostly been investigated quantitatively in many countries and sectors; management commitment to safety, safety rules, and procedures and safety training are still most commonly used safety management practices to improve occupational health and safety performance. In this study, research articles were selected only from English jour- nals; therefore, some research articles in other languages might not be included. The findings of this study can be used to develop a safety management model to reduce the rate of in- juries, accidents, and near misses in high hazardous risk organizations. Overall, the findings provide Safety management practices overview that practitioners use to manage safety per- formance. There are only a few systematic literature reviews available on safety management practices, occupational health, and safety performance. This paper is among the first system- atic literature reviews to analyze how safety management practices have been associated with occupational health and safety performance and provide potential research avenues. Key words: Safety knowledge, Safety motivation, Safety management, Near misses, Injuries, Accidents 1 Introduction Safety management practices enable organizations to reduce the chances of accidents, in- juries, and near misses (Vinodkumar and Bhasi, 2010). According to Kirwan (1998), safety management practices are the actual roles in the organization to remain safe. Therefore, it is quite understandable that to ensure occupational health and safety remains the biggest chal- lenge for practitioners and theorists alike (Clarke, 2006; Fruhen et al., 2019; Lestari et al., 2019; Zohar, 2010). According to the International Labor Organization (ILO - 2018) workers around * Corresponding author. Email: m.ajmal303@gmail.com http://www.jbrc.pk 15 c  Jinnah Business Review