Elsevier

Safety Science

Volume 45, Issue 10, December 2007, Pages 1044-1059
Safety Science

Working in small enterprises – Is there a special risk?

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssci.2006.09.005Get rights and content

Abstract

Ownership structure is an important factor. For independent enterprises, the ergonomic, physical and chemical work environment is more hazardous in small enterprises than in large ones. For enterprises that are part of a larger organization, the work environment tends to be more hazardous in large enterprises when controlling for the same factors. For the psychosocial factors, the trend is different – better in small than in large enterprises independent of ownership. In all enterprises, both public and private, the quality of health and safety management systems and workplace assessment is remarkably higher in large than in small enterprises.

These differences in work environment for small and large enterprises have been studied in the ‘Danish Work Environment Cohort Study’ and ‘Surveillance of health and safety activities in enterprises’. These datasets are linked together to a reliable database with data on work environment and enterprises including size, ownership structure, and health and safety management.

Introduction

In the 1980s researchers suggested that the increasing importance of small enterprises indicated the beginning of a new era for industrial production in which the industry would break away from the dehumanising effects of Fordism and Taylorism (Piore and Sabel, 1984). Craft based small enterprises in so-called ‘industrial districts’ were competitive with large enterprises and they provided a better work environment. Later, other researchers argued that this was an isolated trend. The industrial districts constituted only a small part of the overall picture. A more significant trend was that large enterprises centralised power but decentralised work. In many cases, this leads to poor working conditions in small sweatshops. Improved working conditions would not be a likely result except for small industrial districts in limited time periods. Large enterprises had become ‘lean and mean’ and thereby pushing the risk down to the small enterprises (Harrison, 1997).

Since then, the interest in the work environment of small enterprises has grown rapidly, both politically and scientifically. More and more countries appreciate that employment and economic growth to a large extent depend on small and medium sized enterprises (SME). (Observatory of European SMEs, 2003). Therefore, many countries have launched programmes to support small enterprises, and the EU gives high priority to improving the business conditions for (Commission of the European Communities, 2003b) and the work environment in Commission of the European Communities (2002) SMEs.

The policy approach is based on the assumption that small enterprises have problems with the work environment in terms of high risk and also in terms of controlling the risk, see for example (Commission of the European Communities, 2002). Several authors have pointed out the higher risk, for example Lamm, 2000, Walters, 2001. However, the empirical evidence for an increased risk has been weak. Especially comparisons made between small and large enterprises have been few. However, during the last years, the evidence of special problems in small enterprises has grown. This is particularly the case for accidents.

The purpose of this article is to look further into the differences between small and large enterprises in relation to work environment hazards and work environment management systems and assessment.

Section snippets

Literature study

To examine the status of the knowledge of work environment in small enterprises a broad literature search on the subject was performed on basis of several international databases. The search languages were English and three Scandinavian languages. Primary search terms were: ‘enterprise(s)’, ‘company(ies)’, ‘firm(s)’ in combination with ‘small’, ‘medium’ and ‘large’, and the abbreviations SSE and SME. These search terms were combined with truncated forms of subject terms such as: ‘accidents’,

Method and material

The study combines two datasets. The first dataset is the “Danish Work Environment Cohort Study” (DWECS) from year 2000. It contains self-reported data on physical, chemical and psychosocial work environment. In the year 2000, DWECS included 11,437 randomly selected persons aged 18–69. The participants were primarily interviewed by phone and the response rate was 75%. A total of 5598 respondents were working and they were representative for the national working population. The respondents were

Results

The DWECS database has a number of scale variables related to ergonomic strains. Fig. 2 shows that there is a clear association between enterprise size and most of the ergonomic strains analyzed for private-independent enterprises. The highest strains are found in the smallest enterprises, and the strains gradually decrease with increasing size. It is most clear for strains on back, back/neck and hand. Furthermore, there is a similar tendency for strains on large muscle groups. There is no

Discussion

The non-respondents in the DWECS, SAE and the combined DWECS-SAE databases have been analysed. It shows that there is a slight overweigh of large enterprises in the DWECS-SAE database. The very small enterprises with 1–4 employees have been the hardest to identify, and therefore they are slightly under-represented. There is a slight overweight of the sectors for education, office and administration, whereas industry and retail is slightly under-represented. Gender, age and tenure of

Conclusion

The analysis of the empirical research shows the following results for a representative sample of Danish workplaces:

  • Size is positively correlated with physical working conditions in private-independent enterprises – large enterprises have better working condition.

  • Size is negatively correlated with physical working conditions in private-part enterprises – small enterprises have better working condition.

  • No correlation can be found between size and physical work conditions for public enterprises.

Acknowledgement

The SAE study was initiated and financially supported by the Danish Labour Inspection Service.

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