Commitment or Compliance? Institutional Logics of Work Environment Management

Scholars of the work environment have pointed out how management ideas and practices inspired by a human resource approach are influencing the work environment efforts in Nordic organiza tions. In this paper, we use the ‘institutional logics’ perspective to propose heuristic ideal types of two institutional logics of work environment management:The logic of compliance as the ideal type of the ‘traditional’ approach to work environment management and the logic of commitment as the human resource informed approach. Through a side-by-side comparison of key characteristics, we analyze the two ideal types as instantiations of institutional orders on the societal level with the compliance logic being rooted in the orders of the state and the corporation, and the commitment logic as based on the orders of the corporation.The paper ends with a discussion on the how the two logics can influence concrete work environment practices and approaches to management in organizations.

Commitment or Compliance? Institutional Logics of Work Environment Management

Scholars of the work environment have pointed out how management ideas and practices inspired by a human resource approach are influencing the work environment efforts in Nordic organiza tions. In this paper, we use the ‘institutional logics’ perspective to propose heuristic ideal types of two institutional logics of work environment management:The logic of compliance as the ideal type of the ‘traditional’ approach to work environment management and the logic of commitment as the human resource informed approach. Through a side-by-side comparison of key characteristics, we analyze the two ideal types as instantiations of institutional orders on the societal level with the compliance logic being rooted in the orders of the state and the corporation, and the commitment logic as based on the orders of the corporation.The paper ends with a discussion on the how the two logics can influence concrete work environment practices and approaches to management in organizations.

Hard Work in Soft Regulation: A Discussion of the Social Mechanisms in OHS Management Standards and Possible Dilemmas in the Regulation of Psychosocial Work Environment

Certified occupational health and safety (OHS) management systems have become a global instrument in regulation of the work environment. However, their actual impact on OHS—in particular on softer psychosocial issues in the work environment—has been questioned. The most important standard of OHS management is OHSAS 18001, which has recently been supplemented with a British publically available guideline (PAS 1010) focusing specifically on psychosocial risk management. On the basis of the international literature on management standards, the present paper analyses OHSAS 18001 and PAS 1010 in order to understand the mechanism by which they work. The paper takes a social constructionist approach conceptualizing standards and their expected mechanisms as socially constructed—based on a particular kind of knowledge and logic—although they are presented as objective. Such a constructionist approach also emphasizes how standards transform specific work environment problems into generic procedures that can be audited. In the case of OHS standards, both the work environment in general and the psychosocial risks in particular are transformed into simple monocausal auditable relations whereby the complexity of psychosocial work environment issues seems to disappear. The new PAS 1010 guideline, which is particularly focusing on regulation of the psychosocial work environment, only partly succeeds in solving these shortcomings of OHSAS 18001

Audit of psychosocial risk management systems:between tacit knowledge and standardization

organizations on how to manage risks. Internal and external audits of compliance with thestandard are key elements. Auditors should be competent to carry out the task and befamiliar with risks of the areas they are auditing. The competences and practice of internalauditors have been studied in two Danish municipalities. The results show that auditorshave a varied background and a limited knowledge about psychosocial risks. They havedifficulties in carrying out audits and the results are mainly influenced by personalpreferences