Publications
Publications
- September 2014
- The Compass (Newsletter of the American Society of Safety Engineers)
Safety Managers Should Welcome OSHA Inspections: Results from a Natural Field Experiment in California
By: David I. Levine and Michael W. Toffel
Abstract
For companies with strong internal occupational safety and health auditing programs, OSHA inspections might seem a formality that risk uncovering, at most, nitpicky deviations from the thousands of pages of safety regulations. For those with poor safety practices, OSHA inspections can result in penalties and bad press that risk impugning the company's reputation. Both of these accounts suggest that for managers, the fewer OSHA inspections the better. The results of our research call for a much more welcoming attitude, given we found that inspections by Cal/OSHA, California's health and safety regulator, led to substantial reductions in injuries and workers' compensation costs.
Keywords
Business and Government Relations; Operations; Safety; Governance Compliance; United States; California
Citation
Levine, David I., and Michael W. Toffel. "Safety Managers Should Welcome OSHA Inspections: Results from a Natural Field Experiment in California." The Compass (Newsletter of the American Society of Safety Engineers) 14, no. 1 (September 2014): 4.