International Occupational Health and Safety Management-Systems Standards as a Frame for the Sustainability: Mapping the Territory

Panagiotis Marhavilas, Dimitrios Koulouriotis, Ioannis Nikolaou and Sotiria Tsotoulidou
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Panagiotis Marhavilas: Department of Production & Management Engineering, Democritus University of Thrace, Vas. Sofias 12 St., 67132 Xanthi, Greece
Dimitrios Koulouriotis: Department of Production & Management Engineering, Democritus University of Thrace, Vas. Sofias 12 St., 67132 Xanthi, Greece
Ioannis Nikolaou: Department of Environmental Engineering, Democritus University of Thrace, Vas. Sofias 12 St., 67132 Xanthi, Greece
Sotiria Tsotoulidou: Department of Engineering Project Management, Faculty of Science & Technology, Hellenic Open University, Parodos Aristotelous 18 St., 26335 Patra, Greece

Sustainability, 2018, vol. 10, issue 10, 1-26

Abstract: A significant part of literature has shown that the adoption of Sustainability and Health-Safety management systems from organizations bears some substantial benefits since such systems (i) create a suitable frame for the sustainable development, implementation and review of the plans and/or processes, necessary to manage occupational health-safety (OHS) in their workplaces and (ii) imply innovative thinking and practices in fields of economics, policy-making, legislation, health and education. To this context, the paper targets at analysing current sustainability and OHSMSs in order to make these issues more comprehend, clear and functional for scholars and practitioners. Therefore, a literature survey has been conducted to map the territory by focusing on two interrelated tasks. The first one includes the presentation of the main International Management Systems (IMS) with focus on Sustainability and OHS (S_OHSMS) topics and the second task depicts a statistical analysis of the literature-review findings (for the years 2006–2017). In particular, the main purposes of the literature research were: (i) the description of key points of OHSMS and sustainability standards, (ii) the comparative analysis of their characteristics, taking into account several settled evaluation-criteria and (iii) the statistical analysis of the survey’s findings, while our study’s primary aim is the reinforcement of OHMSs’ application in any organization. The results evince, that the field of industry (with 28%) and also of the constructions (with 16%), concentrate the highest percentage of OHSMS use. In general, there were only few publications including OHSMSs (referred to various occupational fields) available in the scientific literature (during 2006–2017) but on the other hand, there was a gradually increasing scientific interest for these standards (especially during 2009–2012).

Keywords: Occupational Health and Safety (OHS); sustainability; Management Standards (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (15)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:10:y:2018:i:10:p:3663-:d:175376

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