Near Miss Reporting Behavior and the Safety Climate – A Scenario-Based Study

In the aftermath of the March, 2005 incident at BP's Texas City Refinery, the U.S. Chemical Safety Board cited concerns about ?the effectiveness of the safety management system? and ?the corporate safety culture? at that refinery. Included in the Baker Panel's findings were discussions about process safety leadership, the distinct process safety culture at BP's U.S. refineries, and the BP process safety management system that likely results in underreporting of incidents and near-misses.

An independent study was conducted at the University of Wisconsin-Madison that looked at the relationship between employees' perceptions of various factors that are part of the safety climate of the plants and their near-miss reporting behavior. Subjects included employees from three chemical process plants in the U.S. Results showed that subjects who perceived a more positive management culture towards safety, and subjects who perceived more positive supervisory commitment towards safety were more willing to report near misses. This paper discusses the safety climate literature and the results of the near miss reporting behavior study.