Abstract
In spite of a wide range of support measures for companies that should contribute to the implementation of the German occupational safety and health (OSH) law the number of companies fully complying with the core requirements of safety organization and risk assessment exceeds the number of companies running non-mandatory workplace health promotion programmes only moderately. This picture drawn by most recent findings provoked new questions in implementation research. Accordingly, it seems no longer sufficient considering the relationship between policy instruments and workplace health and safety outcome only. In fact, the understanding of employer motivation for compliance needs to be improved by asking why and how companies of different size and sector are to enhance their working environment. This is exactly what the presented research project is doing by a mixed methods approach. Since the project will be finished in 2017 this contribution is mainly confined to the description of theoretical pre-assumptions, basic objectives, research design and alignments. Nevertheless an insight is provided in preliminary conclusions based on first analyses of qualitative interviews already conducted with managers and key OSH agents in 50 companies. Interpretive patterns are to be found in the verbal material. In order to identify both implementation barriers and enablers, these patterns will be condensed into types of attitudes facilitating a subsequent quantitative validation.
Implementation issues arise as a result of a range of factors including ‘real world’ contextual factors that are either overlooked or not captured by other research disciplines. Implementation research shines a light on those factors, providing the basis for the kind of context-specific and evidence-informed decision-making that is crucial to making what is possible in theory a reality in practice. (Peters et al. 2013)
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Notes
- 1.
The latest relevant data are found in the 2011 GDA companies’ survey. The cross-sectional survey was part of the global evaluation of the Joint German OSH Strategy 2008–2012. A social research institute questioned 6500 enterprises by telephone about basic tasks involved in their OSH programs, for example their risk assessment processes and information for and training of employees about OSH, as well as the prevention culture prevailing in these work-places. A follow-up survey has been conducted in 2015 to evaluate the current German OSH Strategy. The results of this follow-up survey are not yet published.
- 2.
The alternative provision model is available for companies up to 20 or in some cases up to 50 employees. After having attended a special seminar at the statutory accident insurance the entrepreneur him or herself can substitute both kinds of provision near-completely. However, if a company works for the first time with special hazardous substances or in case of other special inducements precisely described in the comprehensive catalogue of German Social Accident Insurances “regulation 2” the entrepreneur running the “alternative provision model” yet has to consult an occupational safety specialist or an occupational physician.
- 3.
Original German version: “(…) von Risiko spricht man nur, wenn eine Entscheidung ausgemacht werden kann, ohne die es nicht zu dem Schaden gekommen wäre (Luhmann 1991, p. 25).”
- 4.
Original German version: “Unter Prävention soll hier ganz allgemein Vorbereitung auf unsichere künftige Schäden verstanden werden, sei es dass die Eintrittswahrscheinlichkeit, sei es dass die Höhe des Schadens verringert wird (Luhmann 1991, 38).”
- 5.
The GDA company survey 2011 is based on a pooling of NACE sector codes into risk-oriented sector groups. NACE is an abbreviation for the French “Nomenclature statistique des activités économiques dans la Communauté européenne”. The NACE system is known as the European Statistical Classification of Economic Activities developed by the European Commission to harmonize official business statistics within the European Community.
- 6.
Potential costs result from non-compliance with OSH regulation itself or in fields impinging on OSH, i.e. with environmental law or with consumer rights. Service sectors for example—especially knowledge based services and services predominantly for enterprises—occur a small risk of attracting sanctions, whereas they face huge potential costs for non-compliance with money laundering or anti-corruption law. The insignificance of the risk of non-compliance with OSH and environmental consumer protection law is partially attributable to the increasing time in-between inspections: there are less labor inspectors in the Federal States of Germany than in the past and labor inspectors for the statutory accident insurance institutions do not have enough time to visit small and medium enterprises in low-risk sectors of businesses, such as those in the service sector, on a regularly basis.
- 7.
Even though the level of emotional stress presumably is in many economic sectors at least as salient as the danger of falling, stumbling, or developing musculoskeletal disorders, we classify emotional stress to be less obvious. Therefore emotional stress is not integrated in the concept of high obviousness of hazards.
- 8.
Since there are no metric variables depicting conspicuousness of hazards or possible costs for non-compliance there is no “neutral point” of the described coordinate system in the proper meaning of the word. Data depicting the relevant features at best are ordinal scaled. Therefore it is only valid to speak of an imagined neutral point.
- 9.
By triangulation we understand a research strategy applying different methods and approaches to the same phenomenon or using various data to explore one phenomenon. By doing so, this strategy intends to compensate the weaknesses of the one approach by the strengths of the other.
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Schmitt-Howe, B. (2016). Interpretive Patterns of Occupational Safety and Health: How Do They Affect Safety Organization and Health-Related Decisions of Enterprises? Basic Assumptions and First Impressions out of an Ongoing Project. In: Wiencke, M., Cacace, M., Fischer, S. (eds) Healthy at Work . Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-32331-2_17
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