Managing OHS: A route to a new negotiating order in high-performance work organizations?

Contrary to a widely held view, rather than seeing the certification of Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) as a barrier to increasing employee participation, this article views new ways of structuring participation as a necessary step towards making improvements in OHS management systems. The article first considers how work organization has changed and then in a similar way traces how bargaining has shifted from being distributive to become integrative to create a fundamental change in the negotiation regime. Finally, by analyzing an OHS-certified firm in greater depth, the article shows how solutions for improvements in OHS management and notable bottom-up formulations of OHS benchmarks may help us discover how the organizational form of firms with high-performance work organization can be developed through new participatory structures.

Research highlights► Certification of OHS management (OHSM) does not contradict employee participation. ► It complements continuous improvement in High-Performance Work Organization. ► Participatory OHSM is a new step from distributive towards integrative negotiations. ► A case-study shows how participatory OSHM organizes learning and innovation. ► Which evokes a need for organizing continuous improvement of participation and OHSM.