Abstract:
The industrial accident rate in Hong Kong has steadily declined over the past 20 years,
but has plateaued over the past 5 years and worryingly the fatality rate has been flat for
over 15 years. This clearly highlights a level of under reporting of accidents in that
normally accidents and fatalities are in a roughly constant proportion to one another.
This is corroborated by informal discussions with the insurance industry. Using an
institutional analysis approach to the study, the research team has drawn the conclusion
that institutional, contractual and policy factors adversely affect Hong Kong’s OHSW
statistics. This paper highlights the fact that many of these factors are not under Hong
Kong contractor’s control. However, there is always opportunity to improve
performance and a series of potential initiatives are proposed that target industry-wide
issues. An overarching issue for a company is the balance between the systems it
operates and the culture within which it operates. A key issue in project-based
organisations is to operate with rigid flexibility throughout the business. The goal is
rigid conformance to safety standards but flexibility in how these standards are
achieved. This characteristic is typical of high reliability organisations.
