The Tension Between Worker Safety and Organization Survival
Mark Pagell, Mary Parkinson, Anthony Veltri, John Gray, Frank Wiengarten, Michalis Louis, Brian Fynes
Management Science · 2020 · Volume 66 · Issue 10
Abstract
This research addresses the fundamental question of whether providing a safe workplace improves or hinders organizational survival, because there are conflicting predictions on the relationship between worker safety and organizational performance. The results, based on a unique longitudinal database covering more than 100,000 organizations across 25 years in the U.S. state of Oregon, indicate that, in general, organizations that provide a safe workplace have significantly lower odds and length of survival. Additionally, the organizations that would, in general, have better survival odds benefit most from not providing a safe workplace. This suggests that relying on the market does not engender workplace safety. This paper was accepted by Charles Corbett, operations management .
Keywords
government regulation econometrics, workplace safety
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