Workplace and organizational accident causation factors in the manufacturing industry

Abstract

Labor inspectors investigate accidents to identify possible accident causes, initiate prosecution, and plan future accident prevention. The Method of Investigation for Labor Inspectors (MILI) was designed to help them to identify workplace and organizational factors in addition to immediate factors and legal breaches. The present study analyzes the impact of workplace (work design and provision of unsafe equipment) and organizational factors (training and employee involvement) on accident causation and validates MILI on real accident cases. Accident data from the manufacturing sector are analyzed with LISREL structural equation modeling. Results confirm the relationship between work design and training as well as between provision of unsafe equipment and employee involvement. The present study provides evidence that MILI is a structured accident investigation method allowing multiple accident causation factors to be revealed and that it could help all interested parts (not only labor inspectors, but companies as well) to thoroughly investigate occupational accidents. C 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

The Causes of Severe Accidents in the Andalusian Manufacturing Sector: The Role of Human Factors in Official Accident Investigations

“…It is remarkable that most studies have identified only the risk factors of young workers but not the underlying mechanisms (Laberge & Ledeux, ), although a few of them have already proposed targeting the most frequent causes of accidents in training programs. Such training inadequacy has previously been identified as an indicator of a deficient work design (Katsakiori et al., ).…”

“…Likewise, correspondence analysis (Hobbs & Williamson, 2003) and cluster analysis (Williamson, Feyer, & Cairns, 1996) may be appropriate with more than two categories, as they consider all possible categories at the same time. Other techniques such as structural equation modeling have also been applied (Katsakiori, Kavvathas, Athanassiou, Goutsos, & Manatakis, 2010).…”

Causation of Severe and Fatal Accidents in the Manufacturing Sector

“…As a result of their nature, latent causes are supposed to be contributing causes of active causes [10].…”

“…The first one is to analyze accidents that could be reasonably compared and grouped together. This is because most analyses of causes are cross-sectional [9,10], although some researchers have used a case-control approach [11]. As there is little control of possible confounders, it is important to analyze accidents that are as alike as possible [12,13].…”

Investigation and prosecution following workplace fatalities: Responding to the needs of families

“…Leaving aside studies of workplace disasters, five broad areas of research can be identified. First, there is research on the development, testing and assessment of occupational incident models to determine causation (Hale et al, 2012; Katsakiori et al, 2010; Lundberg et al, 2009). Second, another body of research examines the role of judicial and coronial processes arising from TWD or coronial investigations and tries to determine causal patterns (Brodie et al, 2009; Bugeja et al, 2010; Hopkins et al, 1992; McCallum et al, 2012).…”