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Exploring risk-awareness as a cultural approach to safety : An ethnographic study of a contract maintenance environment

- Borys, David

  • Authors: Borys, David
  • Date: 2007
  • Type: Text , Thesis , PhD
  • Full Text:
  • Description: Safety culture has risen to prominence over the past two decades as a means by which organisations may enhance their safety performance. Safety culture may be conceptualised as an interpretive device that mediates between organisational safety rhetoric and safety programs on the one hand, and local workplace cultures on the other. More recently, risk-awareness has emerged as a cultural approach to safety. Front line workers are encouraged to become risk-aware through programs designed to prompt them to undertake mental or informal risk assessments before commencing work. The problem is that risk-awareness programs have not been the subject of systematic research and the impact of these programs on the culture of safety and the resultant level of risk is unknown. Therefore, this ethnographic study of two sites within a large contract maintenance organisation in Australia explored what impact risk-awareness programs have upon the culture of safety and the resultant level of risk. The researcher spent two months in the field and data was collected through participant observation, semistructured interviews and through a review of organisational documents. This study found that managers focused upon collecting the paperwork associated with the program as proof that workers had a safer workplace, whereas workers preferred to rely upon their common sense rather than the paperwork to keep them safe. As a consequence, the riskawareness program resulted in a culture of paperwork and varying levels of risk reduction because the paperwork associated with the program created an illusion of safety for managers as much as common sense did for workers. The results of this study have implications for safety culture, risk-awareness programs and for organisational learning. They also have implications for organisations wishing to improve their safety culture by encouraging risk-awareness in front-line workers.
  • Description: Doctor of Philosophy

The causes and prevention of airline baggage handler back injuries : Safe designs required where behaviour and administrative solutions have had limited effect

- Dell, Geoff

  • Authors: Dell, Geoff
  • Date: 2007
  • Type: Text , Thesis , PhD
  • Full Text:
  • Description: "Back injuries have consistently been the most common types of injuries suffered by people at work. They have been a significant worker injury problem in most, if not all, industrialised countries for many years and manual handling has long been established as a significant task related back injury causal factor.[...] This research project established that the manufacturers of the jet airlines used by the airlines in this study had not previously been acquainted with the issue of baggage handler back injuries.[...] This study also canvassed the opinion of airline safety professionals and airline baggage handlers concerning baggage handling tasks and working environment related causal factors. [...] A major focus of this research project was also to measure the effect of ACE and Sliding Carpet, two commercially available retro-fit baggage systems, on the risk of back injuries to baggage handlers stacking baggage within Boeing B737 narrow-body aircraft."
  • Description: Doctor of Philosophy

Ergonomics interventions as investments in occupational health and safety : A selected series of case studies within the Australian postal corporation

- Nelson, David

  • Authors: Nelson, David
  • Date: 2006
  • Type: Text , Thesis , PhD
  • Full Text:
  • Description: This thesis examines and reports upon the application of ergonomics interventions to OHS-based industrial problems. The study focuses on the values of these interventions as investment opportunieties for management. A wide review of the scientific and commercial literature, personal information, observation techniques, and a selected series of seven case studies and eleven separate data-sets within the Australian Postal Corporation have been undertaken.
  • Description: Doctor of Philosophy

Monitoring the impact of occupational health and safety education

- Thatcher, Anthony

  • Authors: Thatcher, Anthony
  • Date: 2006
  • Type: Text , Thesis , PhD
  • Full Text:
  • Description: "This research investigated whether engineers, graduating from universities more than a decade after the introduction new occupational health and safety (OHS) legislation in Australia, were being equipped with the knowledge and skills to fulfil their professional, legal and moral responsibilities in relation to occupational health and safety. The study focussed on engineering students as future business leaders and designers of working environments. An instrument was designed to examine the ability of OH&S education to affect decision-making and problem solving competence in engineering students and graduates. The study found that engineering graduates in the 1990's were departing [from] their academic institutions with superficial knowledge of occupational health and safety responsibilities and accountability in the workplace. The evaluative tool identified an absence of safety management skills and knowledge within graduate and student engineer groups and an extensive urge to blame and discipline the victim or blame a government regulatory authority. The research found that although occupational health and safety professionals adopt a strategy of a safe work place rather than place emphasis on individual workers the engineers did not adopt the safe place approach and focussed on the person. It is recommended that the evaluative tool or a derivative of it should be used to evaluate the extent to which our community progresses in developing the vital OHS decision-making skills of the people who will manage and design workplaces." --p.ii.
  • Description: Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

OH&S in small business : Influencing the decision makers : The application of a social marketing model to increase the uptake of OHS risk control

- Cowley, Stephen

  • Authors: Cowley, Stephen
  • Date: 2006
  • Type: Text , Thesis , PhD
  • Full Text:
  • Description: Losses resulting from traumatic injuries and occupational disease are prevalent in the small business sector of Australian industry. Although the true size of the problem is unclear, it is estimated that the losses amount to more than $8 billion annually. The hazard control measures to counter these losses are largely known and are available to small businesses but they are not widely adopted. Regulators and other bodies have employed a range of intervention strategies to influence decision-makers in small businesses but most have focussed on the dissemination of printed materials or broadbased advertising campaigns with limited success......... The research concludes that the listening processes at the heart of social marketing add to the methods already used in the OHS discipline by forcing the marketer to listen to the subjective assessment of risk as perceived by targets as well as to question the evidence base that supports the legitimacy and efficacy of the proposed intervention. The TTM was found to be a useful means of categorising small business decision-maker behaviour and assessing the readiness for change of individuals and therefore the messages that are needed to unfreeze behaviour. The TTM also provides a tool for evaluation of the impact of an intervention.As a result of this research it is suggested that opinion leaders, who are employed within a social marketing model to diffuse information, multiply the effort of those wishing to increase the adoption of an innovation. Thus engagement of opinion leaders by an OHS authority for the communication of risk control messages may be more cost-effective than attempting to visit every workplace within an industry group. Thus, although social marketing is not in the general repertoire of OHS interventions, it appears to be extremely useful as a framework for interventions and, when used in concert with a stages of change model, provides natural lead indicators for evaluating the impact of OHS interventions. Application of social marketing to people who have the responsibility for the health and safety of others was unique.
  • Description: Doctor of Philosphy

Building an understanding of the development of OHS management in small business in the Victorian construction industry

- Leggett, Susan

  • Authors: Leggett, Susan
  • Date: 2009
  • Type: Text , Thesis , PhD
  • Full Text:
  • Description: "Small businesses are regularly perceived to be poor performers in OHS management. However, attributing poor performance soley to size, to the hazardous nature of the industry or to a simplistic combination of both aspects neglects the recognition that there are some small businesses that can manage OHS with greater capacity than others."
  • Description: Doctor of Philosophy
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