An empirical analysis of the effectiveness of occupational health and safety management systems in SMEs
基于193家西班牙制造业中小企业的调查数据，分析了不同职业健康安全管理体系对工伤率的影响，发现结合技术与人员导向措施的系统最有效，且小企业此类系统发展不足。
This article analyses the effectiveness of occupational health and safety (OHS) management in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). In particular, we (1) provide an overview of the implementation of occupational risk preventive activities in a sample of SMEs; (2) characterize alternative approaches of OHS management systems; (3) assess the effectiveness of the identified OHS systems in occupational safety outcomes; and (4) analyse the factors affecting the adoption of such OHS systems. The study is based on primary data obtained by means of a survey on OHS management in 193 Spanish manufacturing SMEs. The analysis disentangles differences between the OHS activity of small-sized enterprises (SSEs) — those under 50 employees — and medium-sized enterprises (MSEs) — 50—250 employees. We find evidence that the effort and type of OHS management system does significantly affect the injury rate. More specifically, firms that complement traditional technical preventive activities with people and organization-oriented procedures are the most effective in reducing occupational accidents. Such advanced OHS systems are significantly less developed in SSEs. Our results also reveal that the choice of OHS system is determined by the quality of industrial relations, rate of unionization, intensity of price-based competition, access to public aid and training activities provided by the OHS public agencies, technology intensity, and the manual nature of workers’ tasks.