The Tension Between Worker Safety and Organization Survival

Mark Pagell (), Mary Parkinson (), Anthony Veltri (), John Gray (), Frank Wiengarten (), Michalis Louis () and Brian Fynes ()
Additional contact information
Mark Pagell: Michael Smurfit Graduate School of Business, University College Dublin, A94 XF34 Dublin, Ireland;
Mary Parkinson: College of Public Health and Human Sciences, Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon 97331;
Anthony Veltri: Fisher College of Business, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 43210;
John Gray: Fisher College of Business, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 43210;
Frank Wiengarten: Esade Business School, Universitat Ramon Llull, 08172 St. Cugat, Spain
Michalis Louis: Michael Smurfit Graduate School of Business, University College Dublin, A94 XF34 Dublin, Ireland;
Brian Fynes: Michael Smurfit Graduate School of Business, University College Dublin, A94 XF34 Dublin, Ireland;

Management Science, 2020, vol. 66, issue 10, 4863-4878

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.

Keywords: government regulation econometrics; workplace safety (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2020.3589 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inm:ormnsc:v:66:y:2020:i:10:p:4863-4878

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Management Science from INFORMS Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Asher ().