Purpose The purpose of this paper is to study the relationship between management’s commitment and effective occupational safety and health committees (OSHCs), which are a form of representative employee involvement in Malaysia. Design/methodology/approach Using data from a survey of 231 manufacturing companies in Malaysia, the study empirically examines both passive and active management commitment and its relationships with the perceived effectiveness of OSHCs. Findings Respondents to the survey, who were members of OSHCs, felt that both passive and active management commitments had significant, positive relationships with OSHCs’ perceived effectiveness, with active management commitment having a stronger relationship with the dependent variable – the effectiveness of OSHCs. All three variables were perceived to be at the medium level, with active management commitment recording the lowest mean value. Research limitations/implications The research is limited by the fact that it is cross-sectional. However, this allows its findings to be placed in the context of past research, underpinned by Malaysia’s manufacturing sector and legislative framework. Practical implications This paper provides suggestions for how the perceived effectiveness of OSHCs can be improved in the Malaysian context. Originality/value This study conceptualises management’s commitment in terms of passive and active commitment, given the context of the current legislative framework, and it addresses the relationships between both types of management commitment and the effectiveness of OSHCs, in the heretofore-unexamined Malaysian manufacturing context.

Occupational Safety and Health Committees (OSHC) were owing to a legislative mandate via section 30 of the Occupational Safety and Health Act 1994 (OSHA 1994) required to be established in workplaces with 40 or more employees. They were a manifestation of employee involvement and joint commitment of employer and employee; the twin pillars of the workplace occupational safety and health self-regulatory system that was attributed to the Roben's Report of 1972 issued in the United Kingdom. The self-regulatory approach was adopted in Malaysia to replace the former approach that was dependent upon prescriptive based regulations and a command and control form of enforcement on the part of the government enforcement agency now known as the Department of Occupational Safety and Health (DOSH). To understand the efficacy of the self-regulatory system in so far as it relates to manufacturing firms in Malaysia, survey data from 231 manufacturing firms were empirically studied. The findings indicate that in terms of the extent of executing legislatively prescribed functions in general, OSHCs fall on a medium scale indicative of the self-regulatory system functioning at an average level. However, functioning in these areas were discovered to be lagging: access to reports provided by external experts, access to safety audits, collect general information on safety and health issues, assist employer in safety and health competitions, carry out studies on safety and health at the place of work, form subcommittee to assist in function, access to internal and external experts in determining safety and health issues and seeking intervention of DOSH when non implementation of OSHC recommendation was unjustified.

The purpose of this paper is to discover the state of competency of occupational safety and health committees (OSHCs)

No abstract

The purpose of this paper is to discover the state of competency of occupational safety and health committees (OSHCs)