In almost all cases, the transport industry has adopted safety management systems (SMS) in response to a regulatory initiative. SMS vary dramatically across transport modes and jurisdictions - often because of the influence of different legacy regulatory programmes, and the attendant cultures....

This paper discusses obstacles faced in implementing SMS and uses concrete examples to show how to overcome them across all modes of transport (air, maritime, rail and road) in leading countries, particularly ITF member countries. The difficulties and problems in implementing SMS can originate...

System resilience is the ability for complex, dynamic-adaptive socio-technical systems to absorb and rebound from trauma or stress, and to avoid "jousting with dragons" where results are uncertain and often fatal. In a safety context, the term "dragons" originates from Professor David Woods at...

Since every Safety Management System (SMS) is intended to provide a framework by which an organisation manages risk, it is inevitable that accident investigators will take a close interest. The good investigator will always want to understand how the SMS was intended to control risk and how this...

Unionists and politicians frequently claim that globalization lowers employment protection of workers. This paper tests this hypothesis in a panel of 28 OECD countries from 1985 to 2003, differentiating between three dimensions of globalization and two labor market segments. While overall...

The effect of employment protection legislation (EPL) on unemployment and employment levels is still an unresolved issue in the literature. To tackle this issue is the aim of this meta-analysis. Drawing on evidence from 72 studies, I find that EPL has no statistically significant effect on the...

This paper tests the hypothesis that employment protection legislation (EPL) increases the incentives of firms to train their employees. The identification strategy uses a regression discontinuity design (RDD) that exploits exemptions of small firms from EPL. Using firm-level data from Finland...

In the this paper, I analyze the effect of Employment Protection Legislation (EPL) on investments in physical capital and labor productivity by exploiting the fact that small establishments in Germany below a given size threshold are exempted from certain parts of EPL. I do this by means of an...