Management of Risk: Theories of Accident Causation in the Workplace

This essay provides an overview of risk management in the workplace, emphasizing the importance of identifying and mitigating risks to prevent injuries, decrease productivity, and maintain workforce morale. It explores various accident causation theories, including the Domino Theory, Human Factors Theory, Epidemiological Theory, and Systems Theory, detailing their principles and practical implications. The essay highlights the role of management in identifying problematic areas, allocating resources, and implementing training programs to reduce risk factors. It also addresses the legal responsibilities of businesses under the Work Health and Safety Act 2011, emphasizing the need for proactive risk management strategies, effective responses to incidents, and comprehensive recovery plans to ensure a safe and productive work environment. The document is available on Desklib, a platform offering study tools and solved assignments for students.

Running head: MANAGEMENT OF RISK
Management of Risk
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

1MANAGEMENT OF RISK
The term Risk management in the workplace can be described as an action to identify and
prioritize the factors of risk within the workplace and that is followed by making necessary
changes to decease the identified factors of risk. Irrespective of the size and category of the
industry, risk management is one of the fundamental principles that should be maintained by
the management of the organization. Risk management is necessary as if it is overlooked, it can
cause potential damage like injuries, decrease in productivity and lesser moral of the workforce
that can make it troublesome for the organization to operate (Glendon, Clarke and McKenna
2016). The purpose of this essay is to highlight various factors of risk management under the
light of several theories regarding accident causation.
There are numerous theories regarding the accident causation within the workplaces and
in this section of this essay those theories will be discussed. There are numerous theories
regarding accident causation and each of the theories has some predictive and explanatory
value. Some of the theories are The Domino Theory, Human factors theory, Epidemiological
theory, Systems theory, behavior theory and many more.
Domino theory was developed by H. W. Heinrich who was a safety engineer; he stated that
accident is an aspect in the sequence that might lead to an injury in the workplace. According to
Heinrich’s theory, the risk factors might be visualized as a sequence of dominos standing on
edge and when one factor falls, proper linkage would be required for the chain reaction to be
completed (Li, Zhang and Liang 2017). It is seen that each and every factors are interdependent
on the previous factor. It is observed that a personal injury can only take place as a result of an
accident and accident can only take place as an outcome of a mechanical or personal hazard. It

2MANAGEMENT OF RISK
has been observed that the mechanical or personal hazard can only be present through the
carelessness of the risk and safety management team of the business organization. The faults of
the individuals either can be acquired or be inherited as an outcome of the social environment
or can also be obtained by ancestry (Glendon, Clarke and McKenna 2016).
To explain the critical aspects of Heinrich’s theory, it can be stated that the factors
preceding the unwanted incident in the workplace that is the unsafe act or the physical or
mechanical hazard must receive most of the attention. Heinrich observed that the individuals
who are actually responsible in the workplace for the control loss, must be interested in all the
factors mentioned previously but, primarily should be concerned regarding the proximate
causes of the accidents and on the accidents (Hale, Borys and Adams 2015). Heinrich also
observed that accidents in the workplaces are most of the times unplanned and majorly
uncontrolled that can result in property damage and even personal injury. For an example, it
can be said that if an individual slips and falls from a considerable height, injury might not
occur, but that is still an accident.
Heinrich have presented his Three E’s sequence that is widely popular as Corrective Action
Sequence. Those three Es are Engineering, Education and Enforcement. He observed that
Engineering controls the hazards in the workplace by the process change or product design. Via
education, the employees can be trained regarding the safety issues, and finally, Enforcement
part ensures that the external and internal rules and regulations and the standards set by the
management regarding the business operations are getting followed by all the employees
within the workplace (Li, Zhang and Liang 2017).

3MANAGEMENT OF RISK
The Human factor theory proposes that errors made by individuals in the workplaces
generally bring in the accidents. These errors can be divided into categories like Overload,
Inappropriate Worker Response and Inappropriate Activities (Asan and Akasah 2015). Overload
involves the psychological and physical factors and it gets influenced by various internal,
environmental and situational factors. Inappropriate Worker Response indicates the
employees’ errors regarding safety and hazardous matters. It also includes work station that is
incompatible, which is the fault of the management and the environment. Lastly, inappropriate
activities involve misjudgment of the risks and lack of training.
Accident theory or Incident theory can be seen as an extension of the theory of human
factors. There are three elements of incident theory and those are Ergonomic traps, Decision to
err and systems failure. In this regard, it can be said that Ergonomic traps are incompatible
tools, work stations and expectations and this is the fault of the management of the
organization (Glendon, Clarke and McKenna 2016). Decision to err is the conscious or
unconscious failure of individuals. Finally the systems failure is the failure of the management
regarding training and effective policy making.
Epidemiological theory studies relationship between the diseases and environmental
factors; apart from that it is also utilized in studying the casual factors present in a relationship.
There are two vital constituents of this theory and those are predisposition characteristics that
show that tendencies might predispose the employees to some specified actions (Hale, Borys
and Adams 2015). On the other hand, the situational characteristics show risk taking, peer
pressure and poor attitude in the workplace (Asan and Akasah 2015). These characteristics

4MANAGEMENT OF RISK
together can prevent or cause accidents that an individual predisposed to a provided situation
might succumb to.
The initial phase of risk management is to investigate and identify the problematic
areas within the workplace that can bring in various hazards that can affect the external and
internal stakeholders of the organization and can potentially damage the property of the
business organization (Moura et al. 2017). Elements that can aggravate the situation are
slippery areas on the floor, inappropriately stored goods, employees not wearing safety gears in
the workplace and the lack of awareness among the individuals of the organization regarding
safety issues. In this regard it should be mentioned that it is the duty of the management of the
business organization to locate the issues and take proper precaution. Though it is a matter of
fact, that most of the business leaders does not understand the cost of the injuries and
accidents of the employees (Hale, Borys and Adams 2015). It is the duty of the management to
compensate the injured employees, but the hidden cost in this area deeply affects the finances
of the organizations (Hale, Borys and Adams 2015). For an example, it can be said that replacing
a trained employee, losing moral of the workforce, repairing the equipments that have been
affected by the disaster and the legal issues which are the obvious consequences of the hazard
within the workplace affects the business organizations deeply.
There are numerous ways that the business owners can take to decrease the rate of
accidents within the workplace and the steps are mentioned in this sector. After analyzing the
problematic areas the second step would be to send resources with an objective to fix the
issue. Then the management should engage the workforce in a training program regarding the

5MANAGEMENT OF RISK
identified segment of the probable hazard. After identifying and analyzing the risk factors in the
workplace, the management should either try to reduce the risk factors or should hire a third
party agency to control the situation (Moura et al. 2017). If the management of the business
organizations show reluctance regarding fix the problematic areas within the workplace that
may harm the workforce, then it would become a major legal issue for the company and
eventually the company may lose their reputation and most importantly the productivity due to
lack of adequate moral of the general workforce.
Thus to conclude, it can be said that according to the Work Health and Safety Act 2011,
the management of the business organizations should manage the risk factors with high priority
and eliminate the factors as soon as possible. This responsibility of eliminating the risk factors
extends to the management of the managements of the large business corporations to small
scale business owners to most importantly the team within the business organizations
especially designated for managing and preventing the risk factors. The five most important
steps are to make relevant strategies to prevent risk factors, the next step is to prevent the risk
factors that has been already identified, after that the individuals or the management should
response with accordance to the nature and fatality of the risk factors which have been
identified. After giving proper response, the management should try to manage the risk factors
and solve the issues so that the situation does not aggravate and affect the individuals in the
workplace and the properties of the organization. The final step is the recovery phase, where
the management of the business corporations should try to compensate the individuals who
have been affected due to the unwanted hazards in the workplace. Thus it can be said that
managing the risk factors in the business organizations are very important for the management

6MANAGEMENT OF RISK
in order to sustain the productivity and profitability along with maintaining the moral of the
workforce and also to avoid the unwanted legal consequences.

7MANAGEMENT OF RISK
References
Asan, A. and Akasah, Z.A., 2015. Developing an Accident Causation Model for Accident
Prevention at Building Construction Sites. In InCIEC 2014 (pp. 273-285). Springer, Singapore.
Glendon, A.I., Clarke, S. and McKenna, E., 2016. Human safety and risk management. Crc Press.
Hale, A., Borys, D. and Adams, M., 2015. Safety regulation: the lessons of workplace safety rule
management for managing the regulatory burden. Safety science, 71, pp.112-122.
Kawakami, N. and Tsutsumi, A., 2016. The Stress Check Program: a new national policy for
monitoring and screening psychosocial stress in the workplace in Japan. Journal of Occupational
Health, 58(1), pp.1-6.
Li, W., Zhang, L. and Liang, W., 2017. An Accident Causation Analysis and Taxonomy (ACAT)
model of complex industrial system from both system safety and control theory
perspectives. Safety science, 92, pp.94-103.
Mortimer, S.T. and Mortimer, D., 2015. Quality and risk management in the IVF laboratory.
Cambridge University Press.
Moura, R., Beer, M., Patelli, E., Lewis, J. and Knoll, F., 2017. Learning from accidents:
Interactions between human factors, technology and organisations as a central element to
validate risk studies. Safety Science, 99, pp.196-214.
Namie, G. and Namie, R., 2018. Risk Factors for Becoming a Target of Workplace Bullying and
Mobbing. Workplace Bullying and Mobbing in the United States [2 volumes], p.53.

8MANAGEMENT OF RISK
Olson, D.L. and Wu, D.D., 2015. Enterprise risk management(Vol. 3). World Scientific Publishing
Company.
Reason, J., 2016. Managing the risks of organizational accidents. Routledge.
Thorsen, S.V., Madsen, I.E.H., Flyvholm, M.A. and Hasle, P., 2017. Associations between the
workplace-effort in psychosocial risk management and the employee-rating of the psychosocial
work environment–a multilevel study of 7565 employees in 1013 workplaces. Scandinavian
journal of public health, 45(5), pp.463-467.
Zhou, Z. and Irizarry, J., 2016. Integrated framework of modified accident energy release model
and network theory to explore the full complexity of the Hangzhou subway construction
collapse. Journal of Management in Engineering, 32(5), p.05016013.