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1、regulation. Focus groups and interviews with more than seventy key safety employees from tenof the eleven largest principal contractors in Australia indicate that, although self regulation is acornerstone of performance based regulation, none of the enactments provide in detail what isspecifically r

2、equired to conform other than in the broadest generic terms. Another commonconcern raised is that often when regulators are approached to provide specific detail of how toconform they refuse to provide it because they may be held accountable in the event of resultinginjuries or fatalities. Not furni

3、shing the appropriate information and resources is contradictoryand in contravention of the stated educational objectives espoused by the majority of theenactments.Keywords: Safety Culture, Behaviour Based Safety, Regulation, Enforcement, Education1.0 INTRODUCTIONThe sheet-anchor of the project on w

4、hich this paper is based holds that, owing to theunacceptable numbers of injuries and deaths in the construction industry, a change of safetyculture in the Australian construction industry is long overdue （vide for example, Parliament ofAustralia Department of the Parliamentary Library 2005; Johnsto

5、ne, 2003）. Consequently, thispaper unequivocally assumes an advocacy position by suggesting ways in which the industrycan improve its safety performance through improving its safety culture. As the title of the papersuggests, either enforcement or education may be the primary motivators of safety cu

6、lture.More crudely put, these could be characterized as the stick or the carrot. However, to suggestthat either singly drives the desired safety culture is contentious and wrong-headed as in allprobability, both are equally necessary and co-dependent as we intend to establish in thispaper. Complicat

7、ing factors are that little conclusive industry specific research has beenconducted on the efficacy of safety culture and that there are various competing and, at times,contradictory approaches to safety culture: In the main there are two major approaches ofwhich one relies on changing organizationa

8、l safety culture by a change process that over a longtime alters the norms, values and attitudes leading to the desired behavioural change: Theother, competing, model, behaviour based safety （BBS）, relies on influencing behaviours whichreduce at risk behaviours thereby creating the desired safety cu

9、lture. As we discuss below,both have merit and disincentives; however quite clearly if the period for complete culturalturnaround espoused in some safety culture literature is seven years it is not surprising that theformer approach has not been embraced in the Australian construction industry Rathe

10、r, thelatter has met with greater acceptance, because it appears to produce results quickly, howeveras we discuss below the underpinning principles may be counterproductive to creating anenduring positive safety culture.In addition, we contend that the specific way in which OHS principal acts in Aus

11、tralia areconstructed also has a profound influence on safety culture; they are penal codes and noncompliance may result in large fines and in, extreme circumstances, gaol. However, this type of persuasion does not necessarily produce a desirable safety culture: Rather the instrumentalisttype of saf

12、ety culture/behaviours that results is predicated on basic compliance with legislativerequirement and it does not produce the vision and values that a pro-active and vibrant safetyculture requires in order to generate desirable safety behaviours. Further, minimalistcompliance, without striving to co

13、ntinually improve performance, is probably the major factorcontributing to the Australian construction industrys poor safety record which the excerpt fromNOHSC below shows.Even though that typically, composite national statistics such as these obfuscate some aspectsof fatalities such as those charac

14、terised obtusely as long term contact with chemicals orsubstances probably for the latter meaning death due to asbestosis or mesothelioma which havelong latency incubation periods and indicate contact with the hazardous substance perhapsthirty years prior to the death: These deaths are reported and

15、conflated with those due toelectrocution euphemistically referred to as contact with electricity which occur on a recurringbasis causing immediate death. Further, this data set omits death due to falls from heights inconstruction specifically which probably accounts for 40 percent of all of the trau

16、matic fatalitiesin construction （calculated from NOHSC Compendium of Workers Compensation StatisticsAustralia, 2001-02, pp. 24, 27）. Also, records of compensated injuries and deaths grosslyunderestimate the actual rates as there is a great deal of under-reporting of injuries in theconstruction indus

17、try, and an unknown number of work related deaths are not reported as suchas they may occur a long time after the employee has left the particular employment or hasretired. Yet another issue relates to the lag between the publication and the time of occurrence.Even so we must rely on the most access

18、ible and the most recently available statistics which,notwithstanding the concerns expressed above, quite clearly show that safety performance inthe construction industry requires major improvement.In 200203, the Construction industry employed approximately 5% of the Australian workforce but account

19、ed for 9% of the accepted workers compensation claims involving one or more weeks off work that were lodged in that year. The incidence of workplace injury and disease for the Construction industry in 200203 was 27 claims per 1000 employees equating to around 34 claims per day. This was a decrease f

20、rom the incidence rate of 34 claims per 1000 employees recorded in 199899 but remains much higher than the current national average of 16 claims per 1000 employees.The incidence of workplace fatalities in this industry was 9.2 fatalities per 100 000 employees in 200203 which was three times higher t

21、han the national average of 3.1 fatalities per 100 000employees. Over the past five years the number of compensated fatalities has decreased from 51deaths in 199899 to 42 in 200203, but still remains the second highest of all industries.The most common type of injury/disease was sprains and strains

22、accounting for 43% of all claims.The most common causes of compensated injury and disease in this industry in 200203 were: body stressing （muscular stress due to manual handling or repetitive movement） which accounted for 36% of all claims; falls, trips and slips of a person which accounted for 26%

23、of all claims; and being hit by moving objects which accounted for 16% of all claims.In 200203 the most common causes of compensated fatality in this industry were long term contact with chemicals or substances, which accounted for 30% of fatalities and contact withelectricity which accounted for a

24、further 17% of fatalities （NOHSC, 2004）.The absolute necessity of leadership by senior management to create a proactive and beneficial safety culture or to change a negative safety culture we have examined and proclaimedelsewhere . Consequently we do not discuss these necessary elements of achieving

25、 a desirable safety culture here because this is not the objective of this paper. Rather, we suggest that as well as the primacy of executive managements leadership in promoting safety culture the legislative stick is essential, for without the necessary compliance that penal codes generate, constru

26、ction industry safety performance would be even worse than the above statistics suggest. Contradictory to our position that minimalist compliance is not desirable it is often the case that when an organization has suffered a major injury or multiple injuries or a fatality that subsequent to prosecut

27、ion or lesser penal provisions it is galvanized into changing safety behaviours for the better and turning the safety culture around. It may well be construed that such an event provides a pathway to education.Another complicating factor is that there is very little formal safety and health education for OHS officers and, of greater concern, for key personnel charged legally with the observance and enforcement of safety in the construction industry. OHS legislation generically designates theemployer, i.e. the general manager, the MD or persons in control of premises a