Making Companies Safe - what works? (CCA ... - Unite the Union

More documents

Recommendations

Info

Since employers rarely have information concerning the cost-effectiveness of investing in OHS, they are unlikely to consider this as an option. Moreover, Wright et al. point out that the costs involved in retrieving this information may not be seen as worthwhile. 14 This is consistent with Wright’s observation that: “management will adopt business improvement techniques with which they are most familiar, such as automation and pay restraint, to the exclusion of other less familiar options, and will only consider further techniques if their performance target is not met.” 15 Second, Hopkins and Cutler and James, have demonstrated that managers do not make rational decisions about health and safety investment even in circumstances where they do have access to accurate information concerning the cost-effectiveness of investment and / or the likelihood of a particular event occurring. Both authors cite as an example the capsizing of the ‘Herald of Free Enterprise’ off the coast of Zeebrugge, which killed 192 people. A formal inquiry into the circumstances of the disaster found that senior managers of P&O Ferries were aware of the risk of capsize since they were aware that ferries had sailed with their bow doors open on previous occasions. Senior managers were also aware that there was a solution to the problem, since they had been urged by various ships’ masters to invest in warning lights on the bridge of the ferries. These warning lights would have warned captains whether or not the bow doors were open. The costs of installing the lights would not have been excessive and certainly represented a cost-effective investment in relation to the costs of a ferry capsizing. However, managers refused the requests to install a warning system. Hopkins explains this apparently irrational behaviour by arguing that, “no matter how costly a safety failure may seem for the company as a whole, top managers themselves may be shielded from any untoward financial consequences. 16 ” Consequently, “The relative indifference to safety displayed by senior officers at P&O, which appeared quite irrational from the point of view of any overall cost-benefit analysis, may well have been quite rational in terms of the personal cost-benefit calculations implicitly made by these decision makers.” 17 Hopkins cites other major disasters (the Bhopal and the Moura Mine disasters) to demonstrate that safety failures do not necessarily have any ‘costs’ for key decision-makers (or even shareholders), even when the costs born by the organisation are huge. For example, immediately following the Bhopal disaster senior management were paid 28 million dollars in so-called “golden parachutes” as insurance against future takeover attempts. And in 1988 – just four years after the disaster – the company made record earnings per share. Hopkins therefore argues that whilst safety may ‘pay’ in the abstract sense, this is irrelevant unless it can be shown that safety pays for relevant decision makers. The case studies discussed by Hopkins demonstrate further the potential limitations of relying on financial arguments to motivate managers to take action of OHS. It is clear that in at least some cases (and perhaps in many cases) safety does not pay for key decision makers since they are shielded from any financial loss following safety failures. Inherent dangers of the safety pays argument Finally, even if employers (and individual senior managers) in the UK were to bear a greater proportion of the real costs of injuries and ill-health, there is a more general problem with encouraging an economic approach to occupational health and safety amongst UK firms. This is that the economic costs to employers incurred by accidents, injuries and ill-health do not necessarily correspond directly to the most significant health and safety risks. This means employers hoping to reduce costs will not necessarily expend money on health and safety where the risks to workers are greatest. For instance, Cutler and James point out that. “A financially driven approach must assume that employers would give priority to examining the case for investment where accident costs are highest.” They then demonstrate that such an approach can lead to outcomes and patterns of investment that do not necessarily advance worker safety: “The [HSE’s Costs of Accidents] study estimates that the average costs of non-injury accidents are nearly three times those of injury accidents (£224 against £75). Thus, the pursuit of financial returns may target those accidents less likely to be linked to personal injury.” 18 71
Similarly, firms might make an economic calculation that lost-time injuries cost more (in productivity terms) than occupational diseases characterised by long latency periods and difficulty in proving that the condition was caused by work (such as lung cancer). In economic terms, it would be perfectly rational for employers to reduce expenditure aimed at minimising workers’ exposure to carcinogens, even where this resulted in a significant risk to workers, and spend that money instead on reducing slips, trips and falls. Not only, therefore, might employers fail to safeguard workers in relation to the full range of health and safety hazards, but they might also prioritise less serious hazards over life-threatening diseases simply because the less serious hazards cost the firm more. An example from the empirical literature is the case of the Esso Gas Plant explosion, which occurred outside Melbourne. Evidence suggests that management were conflicted between the need to control potential major hazards arising from business operations at the Longford plant, and the need to reduce the costs of lost time injuries. They chose to focus on the latter at the expense of the former, with disastrous results. 19 There are then potential dangers to workers in advocating an approach based on economic calculation, since the logical extension of the HSE’s argument is that “the rational employer should… prioritise the avoidance of accidents by reference to potential financial returns” 20 rather than by reference to the relative risks to workers health and safety posed by a range of existing hazards. Reputational Risk Whilst government agencies have not been particularly successful in persuading companies of the economic benefits of improved Occupational Health and Safety performance, it is now being suggested that regulators should concentrate on persuading employers that safety pays in terms of other (sometimes non-tangible) business benefits, which nevertheless ultimately affect the bottom line. 21 There is some support for the contention that reputational risk motivates employers to comply with the law. 22 For instance, an OECD report found that: “many enterprises are motivated to comply with the law, or at least to appear to comply with the law, in order to maintain their legitimacy in the eyes of the government, industry peers, and the public… Hoffman’s (1997) study of corporate environmentalism in the US petroleum and chemicals industry uses neo-institutional theory to explain why the growth in corporate attention to environmental issues did not follow trends in volume of new environmental laws and regulations nor growth in industrial expenditure on environmental issues as deterrence theory would predict, but rather rose and declined with public concern with environmentalism… Similarly Rees’ (1997) study of the emergence of the US Chemical Manufacturers’ Association, Responsible Care, self-regulatory programme also finds that it was the imperatives of institutional legitimacy that forced chemical companies to regulate themselves after the Bhopal accident, rather than a simple model of deterrence.” 23 However, there are two problems with a straightforward acceptance that ‘repuational risk’ is a significant motivator of firm behaviour. First, as the OECD report acknowledges: “a number of scholars who have researched in this area have pointed out that often a concern with legitimacy can motivate enterprises to manage their image of compliance, without necessarily complying substantively with the requirements of regulation”. 24 72 Second, much of the evidence concerning the effects of public opinion come from studies concerned with industry initiatives in relation to environmental management whereas evidence on the extent to which reputational factors influence health and safety management have been mixed. For instance, an evaluation of the ‘Good Health is Good Business’ campaign found that only 2% of respondents (including both large organisations and SMEs) made improvements mainly due to the wish to improve company image and reputation. And only 1% of respondents cited shareholder, bank, or public pressure as the main reason for making improvements. 25
Page 1 and 2:
Making companies safe: What works?
Page 3 and 4:
Acknowledgments: Courtney Davis wou
Page 5 and 6:
Contents INTRODUCTION 7 MAIN FINDIN
Page 7 and 8:
So for example, the new Strategy do
Page 9 and 10:
“In recent years, there had been
Page 11 and 12:
Chapter eight is a short chapter lo
Page 13 and 14:
• The only sector-specific data o
Page 16:
PART ONE Legal Regulation v Volunta
Page 19 and 20: self-regulation through the adoptio
Page 21 and 22: • A number of studies evaluating
Page 23 and 24: Gap in the law Yet despite the impo
Page 25 and 26: By September 2002 the Government ha
Page 27 and 28: Conclusion In conclusion, the Green
Page 29 and 30: effectiveness of safety representat
Page 32 and 33: Chapter Four Conclusion There is ve
Page 34: PARTS TWO & THREE Strategies to sec
Page 37 and 38: A recent HSE discussion paper illus
Page 40 and 41: Chapter Five The Health and Safety
Page 42 and 43: Support for these findings comes fr
Page 44 and 45: Gray and Scholz attempt to understa
Page 46 and 47: perceived low level of current fine
Page 48 and 49: Chapter Six The Implications for th
Page 50 and 51: five times greater than if one had
Page 52: Select Committee on Work and Pensio
Page 56: The evidence reviewed in part two s
Page 59 and 60: health risk management between “a
Page 61 and 62: The relationship between knowledge
Page 63 and 64: Conclusion Whatever factors prompt
Page 65 and 66: 16 This was at an aggregate level.
Page 67 and 68: - the year that the initiative was
Page 69: When safety does not pay (or does n
Page 73 and 74: However, even in the context of mul
Page 75 and 76: does, exert a negative influence on
Page 77 and 78: to cost “a little” or “nothin
Page 79 and 80: For instance, when BP Grangemouth r
Page 82 and 83: Chapter Ten ‘Earned Autonomy’ T
Page 84 and 85: A similar experiment in self-regula
Page 86 and 87: Whilst the original focus of TQM wa
Page 88 and 89: “the more firms incorporate ethic
Page 90 and 91: “In Norway the mandated model is
Page 92 and 93: odies, pressure groups and/or the m
Page 94 and 95: Health and Safety Management System
Page 96 and 97: Gunningham and Johnstone argue that
Page 98 and 99: Conclusion Proposals that some comp
Page 100 and 101: 37 The Norwegian Internal Control R
Page 102 and 103: PART FOUR Conclusion 103
Page 104 and 105: Chapter Eleven Conclusion The Healt
Page 106 and 107: Appendix Select Committee on Work a
Page 108 and 109: References Alder A., Tipping A. and
Page 110 and 111: Health and Well-Being’, in Frick
Page 112 and 113: Honey S., Hillage J. et al. (1997)
Page 114 and 115: Nichols T. and Armstrong P. (1973)
Page 116 and 117: Wokutch R.E. and VanSandt C.V. (200
show all

Making Companies Safe - what works? (CCA ... - Unite the Union

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?