Missing in action: research on occupational health and safety management in organizations

The enormous problem of workplace injuries and deaths continues to beset countries. Reflexive OHS regulation often places primary responsibility on employers’ management of OHS in organizations. This paper seeks to ascertain how OHS management at the organizational level has been treated in the research literature. A review of leading journals (13 in management, 6 in HRM) from 1994 to 2005 showed OHS management to be largely missing as the subject or field of study. Naturally, the OHS literature was more fruitful: 5 main categories were identified. However, there was little in the way nuanced explanation of OHS management at the organizational level. The paper concludes by arguing for an in-depth, contextually embedded, multi-narrative examination of successful, exemplary OHS management.