Safety compliance in a highly regulated environment: A case study of workers’ knowledge of rules and procedures within the petroleum industry

•The aim was to identify factors that affect workers’ knowledge of rules and procedures.•Twenty-four contract workers within the Norwegian petroleum industry were interviewed.•Eight different factors within the workers’ organizational context were identified.•These eight factors affected the workers’ knowledge of rules and procedures.•The findings are important for understanding the origins of unintentional violations.

Violations of rules and procedures are commonly identified as an important causal factor in workplace accidents. Essentially, there are two different types of violations: intentional and unintentional violations. Whereas the former term refers to deliberate violations of rules and procedures that are known and understood by the actor, the latter refers to violations of rules and procedures that the actor has no awareness or knowledge of and therefore operates without any reference to. The vast majority of previous research has been concerned with intentional rather than unintentional violations. This implies that researchers have put a particular focus on the aspects of work that affect workers’ safety motivation and their attitudes towards compliant behavior, and that they have been less concerned with the factors that affect workers’ knowledge of rules and procedures. On the basis of semi-structured interviews of 24 contract workers within the Norwegian petroleum industry, this research gap is addressed in the present paper. The objective is to identify, categorize and gain a comprehension of the most significant factors that affect workers’ knowledge of rules and procedures. Analysis revealed that eight different factors within the workers’ organizational context are important. These are sorted into three paramount categories: the safety management system, work characteristics and social interaction. The theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.