Towards an OHS Compliance Model:

1
Towards an OHS Compliance Model

• Cath Scully and Shane Stockill
• Griffith University SLRC

2
Session overview

• Review models of compliance
• Organisational responses to regulation
• Contribution of organisational learning
• Questions / input / advice

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Assumptions about OHS compliance

• Asymmetrical relationship between labour and
  capital
• Increasingly conservative industrial relations
  regimes in industrialised countries
• Falling levels of union membership and
  participation
• Focus on flexible labour markets, proliferation
  of individual contracts paring back of
  industrial awards
• Increase in precarious employment has significant
  negative effect on OHS outcomes (Quinlan, Mayhew
  and Bohle, 2001))
• Effective OHS requires systematic approach
  (Bluff, 2003)
• Systematic approach has had an significant, if
  piecemeal influence on OHS legislation
• Risk management basis of OHS legislation and
  codes of practice across Australian state
  jurisdictions

4
Compliance defined

• Compliance
• An on-going process of negotiation between the
  regulator and business organisations (Manning,
  1988)
• Requires the development of social relations and
  mutual trust to maintain this bargaining
  relationship (Hutter, 1997)
• Working definitions of compliance
• Full compliance
• Temporary compliance
• Acceptable non-compliance
• Unacceptable compliance

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Compliance models (1)

• Interesting literature on business compliance
  with regulation
• Range of compliance models but little specific to
  OHS
• Process models
• Parker (2002) - management commitment to comply
  learning to comply institutionalisation of
  compliance
• Hutter (2001) as above - stage 3 operational
  and normalisation phases
• Typologies of business responses to regulation
• Haines (1997) blinkered / virtuous continuum
• Braithwaite (1993) building on Merton (1968)
• Conformity innovation ritualism retreatism and
  rebellion
• Zwetsloots model of OHSM development in
  organisations (2000)
• Ad hoc systematic system proactive stages

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Compliance models (2)

• Haines (1997)
• Alerts us to the importance of the contexts in
  which businesses operate
• This regulatory space impacted by size of
  organisation type of industry industry
  competitiveness organisations power and position
  within the industry
• Identifies 2 broad types of responses to
  workplace deaths
• Virtuous / blinkered continuum of responses
• Organisations culture major influence on
  response
• Key interest for regulators is facilitating
  virtuous responses (prior to incidents)

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So why are these processes (models) hard for
organisations to engage with?

• Theories of organisation based on rational actors
• Are organisations rational?
• More so than individuals, but
• Organisational life is one of bounded rationality
  (Simon, 1945)
• Theories of organisation rational /
  non-rational
• Rational theories stress importance technical
  systems for OHS
• Non-rational theories focus on the importance of
  worker participation
• OHS regulation requires that organisations
  self-regulate ie. Learn how to comply
• Organisations often come from, at best, a naïve
  or malevolent view of OHS compliance
• Scarce OHS enforcement resources limits the
  potential for detection of breaches amoral
  calculators

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Organisational responses to OHS regulation

• Jensen (2001) organisations generally respond in
  a one shot manner
• interventions are limited to known OHS issues
• paperwork is generated rather than real solutions
  implemented
• the focus is on physical risks with little
  appreciation for work organisation or
  psycho-social issues
• a sense of satisfaction between parties is seen
  as more important than selecting higher order
  controls
• work groups defer to technical departments for
  solutions thereby limiting on-going ownership
  participation in OHS
• size of organisation predicts the likelihood of
  response
• lack of organisational learning is evident in
  business responses to the workplace assessment
  requirements
• Scully OHS, EEO, UD regulation - orgs /
  employers especially SMEs
• limited understanding or unawareness of OHS
  legislation / requirements
• poor knowledge of risk management, or need to
  take systematic approach
• generally dread inspection, but this does not
  motivate them to improve OHS or take a systematic
  approach
• Stockill responses to OHS enforcement
• Over-reliance on admin controls / focus on worker
  behaviour and errors
• Management views of OHS a key influence on
  culture and response

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Organisational learning (1)

• Current focuses, processes and practices in
  organisational learning (Wang and Ahmed (2003)
• Individual learning (training and development)
• Process or system (improving information
  processing and problem solving capabilities)
• Culture or metaphor (learning culture with
  employee empowerment, participation and
  collaborative teams)
• Knowledge management (interaction and
  strengthening knowledge base)
• Continuous improvement (adoption of TQM
  practices)
• Creativity and innovation
• Triple loop learning
• Organisational unlearning
• Knowledge creation
• Creative thinking

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Organisational learning (2)

• Clegg (1998) identifies two types of
  organisational learning
• Exploitative (Incremental)
• Focus is on making tasks explicit and routine
• Quality is achieved through continuous
  improvement
• Exploratory (Innovative)
• Focus is on flexibility in order to develop
  innovative solutions and new ways of doing things
• Investment in learning for future organisational
  realities
• Organisations require rational balance of
  learning styles
• Relative to the existing power relations and
  distribution of knowledge within the organisation

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From theory to practice

• What role does organisational learning play in
  systematic OHS compliance?
• Compliance literature suggests that organisations
  face significant challenges in the process of
  learning to comply.
• How do they meet these challenges?
• How do organisations unlearn in order to change
  their behaviour?
• Insights from Verna and Andrea

12
What could a smart regulator do?

• What are the additional training needs for OHS
  inspectorates?
• Need a greater appreciation of organisational
  learning capacities and processes.
• Need to equip their inspectors with the skills to
  enable them to evaluate what stage of the
  compliance process the organisation has attained.
• This awareness would inform selection of the most
  appropriate enforcement strategy to move the
  organisation towards OHS compliance

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Questions / input / advice

• What else needs to be considered in a dynamic
  model of OHS compliance?
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