Organizational and environmental correlates of OSHA violations in selected industries: An exploratory study.
Item
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Title
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Organizational and environmental correlates of OSHA violations in selected industries: An exploratory study.
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Identifier
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AAI9838821
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identifier
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9838821
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Creator
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Chopra, Parveen C.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Moshe Banai
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Date
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1997
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Business Administration, Management | Economics, Labor | Sociology, Industrial and Labor Relations | Sociology, Criminology and Penology
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Abstract
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This exploratory study tests the relationship between U.S. corporation's violations of OSHA laws and some of the organizational and environmental variables.;Most corporate crime studies are based on large size Fortune 500 firms and suffer from range-restriction and apply to less than one percent of the universe of industries. This exploratory study includes a cross-section of large or small, public or private firms that may or may not have offered its stock for sale. Industry level analysis is based on the compliance ratio calculated for all manufacturing industries that had 50 or more inspections during 1989-1990. Behavior of certain industries was compared with others in regard to compliance of OSHA laws. Three industries representing different levels of compliance; auto and parts (n = 73), fabricated structural metal products (n = 54), and petroleum and coal industry (n = 29), were selected for further organization level analysis. The 1105 questionnaires sent to Presidents of corporations had a response rate between 12.85% and 21.16%.;A conceptual model reviewing corporate crime studies is presented to explain occurrence of violation of laws and is based on inter-disciplinary and systems approach.;Changing role of OSHA under different administrations, implications of this research, and critical issues for compliance, based on this research, are discussed. The role of the recently formed U.S. Sentencing Commission, for uniform application of laws, holding executives personally liable for corporate illegality is discussed.;Due to difficulty in getting corporate violatory data and its cumbersome nature, an ordinal Index of Seriousness of Violatory Behavior (ISVB) has been developed. Alternate form reliability as measured by Spearman's Rank Order correlations indicated highly significant (p {dollar}<{dollar}.0001), coefficients between.72 and.92 indicating it could be used in future research. This study found ISVB predicting violatory behavior very well as compared to other measures.;In correlation analysis, the study found the number of inspections by OSHA, corporate negative growth rate, long term debt ratio and some of the operational measures of size significantly and positively related to violatory behavior. Contrary to hypothesis technology was found to be positively correlated with violatory behavior in regard to serious violations. Organizational slack and control of board by the insiders were not found having any significant relationship with the violatory behavior. The researchers are warned that results of this study are tentative and due to restrictive sample size they cannot be generalized. They need to be replicated in larger sample size studies.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
