“To Him Who Has, More Will Be Given…”– A Realist Review of the OHSAS18001 Standard of OHS Management

Abstract

The OHSAS18001standard was first published in 1999 by British Standards and is now the most widely adopted management systems for occupational health and safety worldwide. The standard is intended to support companies in attaining a higher health and safety standard. However, there is limited knowledge on how this standard in fact is working in practice and thus can improve health and safety at work.

Integrating operations management and occupational health and safety: A necessary part of safety science!

“…The need to control the risk of accidents and of occupational illnesses has therefore formed the basis for OSH management and constitutes what we term the risk logic (Aven, 2014). Today this logic has been reinforced by both the EU framework directive on OSH from 1989, which made risk assessment the revolving point for OSH legislation and enforcement in the European countries, and by the widespread diffusion of the OSHAS18001 standard certifying organisational management systems (Robson et al, 2007;Uhrenholdt Madsen et al, 2018).…”

“…The application of systematic forms of occupational safety and health (OSH) management has expanded during the last few decades (Uhrenholdt Madsen et al, 2018). This is especially the case for the development of formal OSH management systems, where the recently published ISO 45001 is a prime example of this development.…”