Examining the relationship between organisational factors and residual risk in the mining industry

Globally, the mining industry continues to experience significant workplace incidents, often with serious and fatal consequences. In Australia, the mining industry is considered a hazardous occupation that experiences episodes of increasing and decreasing alertness with regards to the management of workplace risks leading to a pattern of fatalities and disasters. There is also evidence of substantial investments by mining companies to improve the safety and reliability of their workplace environments. However, despite these investments in improving workplace safety, many stakeholders in the mining industry have warned that the industry should adopt a different approach that recognises the significance of human and organisational factors in risk management activities, otherwise, the situation is unlikely to improve. The failure of risk controls has been identified as a major driver for the current safety performance trend of the Australian mining industry, which is characterised by the occurrence of repeat accidents. Recent state-commissioned reviews focused on the occurrence of fatal accidents in the Australian mining industry have also recommended a consideration of control implementation and effectiveness to support current and future accident prevention strategies. Furthermore, the reviews have also suggested a deliberate focus on organisational factors as a means to broaden the understanding of control implementation and effectiveness in mining workplaces, including the mechanisms of their failure. While considerable research has been done on accident causation in other high-risk industries, there is limited empirical evidence to support the role of organisational factors in risk management activities, which directly impacts the implementation and effectiveness of risk controls in mining workplaces. Consequently, this ethnography examined, through the lens of symbolic interactionism, the impact of organisational factors on risk management practices in mining workplaces. The researcher spent two years immersed in a mining site collecting data through participant observations, in-depth interviews, and document analysis, while interacting with mining employees in their natural settings. Qualitative data analytical strategies were used to inductively examine, analyse, and interpret field data and present findings in the form of a thematic narration. The study confirmed that organisational factors such as leadership, supervision, communication, organisational approach to risk management, learning from incidents, resources allocation, and management decisions play a significant role in determining workers’ perceptions on risk and ultimately how they manage residual risk in the workplace. Organisational factors were found to possess mechanisms through which they influenced the way employees perceived and dealt with workplace risks. In addition, organisational factors were found to be interrelated and their interaction impacted the implementation and effectiveness of risk controls. The ethnography made significant contributions to the understanding of organisational factors as key contributors in the occurrence of workplace incidents in the mining industry. From a risk management perspective, deeper insights were gained regarding the mechanisms of influence for identified organisational factors on residual risk management, including how this influence impacts the implementation and effectiveness of risk controls. Methodologically, the ethnography also demonstrated that workplace culture can be utilised as an illuminating device, through which workplace interactions can be observed and studied to understand their impact on safety and risk management activities. Finally, the ethnography provided some practical implications for improving workplace risk controls in the context of broader workplace safety and risk management and recommended some areas of focus for future research.