A systematic review of safety violations in industry
Introduction
In his seminal work Human Error, Reason (1990) noted “an important lesson to be learned … is that the term ‘error’ does not capture all the ways in which human beings contribute to accidents” (p. 194). The other contribution mechanism to which Reason was referring was through what is commonly referred to as a violation. Violations of safety rules, procedures and norms have now been the subject of extensive research, especially among recreational drivers (“recreational drivers” in this paper refers to drivers who are not driving as part of their employment) (e.g. Aberg and Rimmo, 1998, Blockey and Hartley, 1995, Parker et al., 1995, Reason et al., 1990). However, there is a limited amount of research literature that investigates rule violations in work settings, and still less exists in work settings where the causes of violations are studied. This is an alarming gap in the literature considering that some industries estimate that about 70% of their total accidents can be attributed to violations (Mason, 1997).
Perhaps part of the reason that the causes of violations have not been studied in detail stems from the idea that violations are actions taken by ‘bad’ people. That the term “violation” is common and that people hold their own colloquial definition for the concept may also have contributed to the lack of systematic research to understand both the concept and causes of violations. This paper aims to provide a specific definition for the term “violation.” Then, this paper seeks to systematically review what is currently known about the causes of safety violations in industry because efforts to secure or increase compliance with safety protocols and norms need an evidence base to guide intervention efforts. Armed with a specific definition and existing evidence about the causes of violations, this paper then re-frames violations as evidence of system problems rather than as actions taken by ‘bad’ workers.
Section snippets
Safety violations research
What is known to date about violations is that they certainly exist and that some evidence suggests they can lead to unwanted outcomes such as accidents. In studies of recreational driving, the existence of violations has been demonstrated using drivers’ self-reports (e.g. Kanellaidis et al., 1995, Shinar et al., 2001), frequently using a variation of Reason et al.’s (1990) Driver Behavior Questionnaire (e.g. Aberg and Rimmo, 1998, Blockey and Hartley, 1995, Parker et al., 1995). Driving
Violations: good or bad for safety?
Safety violations clearly exist in industry, but it remains unclear under what circumstances violations help or hurt safety. In recreational driving, it has been established that violations can lead to outcomes such as accidents (e.g. Özkan and Lajunen, 2005, Parker et al., 1995, Reason et al., 1990), though the link between safety violations and unwanted outcomes is not as firmly established in industrial settings. If violations can lead to accidents, it provides the first reason to study the
Definitions
The first step in the review was to agree upon a definition of a safety violation. Table 1 provides a list of definitions uncovered in the literature.
The fact that there is variety among the definitions can lead to different conceptualizations of “violations.” The differences between definitions used in the literature as well as the absence of definitions in much of the literature necessitate a more unified approach to the definition of violations.
The definitions uncovered in the literature
Inclusion and exclusion criteria
Inclusion criteria for articles in the systematic review were the following: (1) the study was empirical with a substantive focus (operationalized as articles that addressed violations in their title or in their abstract) on identifying variables that influence or predict violations of safety rules, (2) the subjects were employees and the violations were work-related, (3) the article was published prior to January 1, 2007, (4) the article was available either online or though the University of
Results
Table 2 provides a summary of the 13 articles that met the inclusion criteria.
Discussion
The main goal of this review was to answer the question, “What causes safety violations in industry?” Thirteen papers addressed this and 57 variables were examined as causes of safety violations. All of the reviewed studies implicitly or explicitly defined violations as an unwanted, though in some cases necessary, behavior. None of the reviewed studies examined whether violations can improve system performance and safety. With that caveat in mind, the discussion proceeds with a discussion of
Conclusion
The purpose of this paper was to provide a review of the empirical literature studying causes of violations of safety rules in organizational settings. Thirteen articles studying a variety of work settings were identified that met the review criteria, and 57 potential predictors of violations were examined. The predictors of violations appeared to be multi-factorial, and were generally related to the individual worker, the organization, the worker's task, or the organization's rules. Some of
Acknowledgements
This study was funded in part by a grant from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (R01 HS013610, Karsh PI). The authors would like to thank Dr. Pascale Carayon and Dr. Douglas A. Wiegmann for helpful discussions on the topic of violations, and Dr. Todd Loushine, Emily Davenport, and Scot Barnett for their helpful suggestions. The authors would also like to thank Amy Kindschi and Emily Wixson for their help on searches and databases. Finally, the authors thank the anonymous reviewers
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