Influences on small-firm compliance-related behaviour: the case of workplace health and safety

The authors investigate the relative roles of a number of influences on workplace health and safety in small firms and, more specifically, the adoption of compliance-related improvement measures. From findings drawn from a survey of over a thousand British small enterprises, marked variations in firm behaviour with respect to health and safety were found, underlining the heterogeneity of small firms in this respect, and the way such behaviour reflects their varied contexts. Factors identified as being particularly associated with a propensity to make compliance-related improvements were: regulatory enforcement activity, use of external assistance with respect to health and safety issues, enterprise size and growth performance, management training and experience, and membership of trade or business associations. Although, as a group, ethnic-minority businesses were found to be neither more or less likely to make improvements of this type compared with their white-owned counterparts, detailed analysis revealed that such variations did exist between individual ethnic groupings; variations that are themselves seen to reflect a number of factors, particularly the employment size and sectoral context. Primarily the authors conclude that inspections on the part of regulatory officials are the most important influence, although there is some scope for more innovative approaches to encouraging compliance-related improvements.