Institutionalizing behavior-based safety: Theories, concepts, and practical suggestions.

This paper describes issues related to the institutionalization of behavior-based safety interventions. Key theoretical positions are discussed, practical suggestions are made, and preliminary data are presented. it is suggested that institutionalization requires an understanding of the relationship between how people talk about safety and how they manage safety on a daily basis. Furthermore, to increase the probability of it is argued that we must first intervene at the level of the controller of contingencies. Finally, it is claimed that institutionalizing behavior-based safety starts in our graduate training programs and requires that we train students to communicate the principles of behavior analysis more effectively. ********** The Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 was a catalyst for psychological research related to proactive injury reduction. Initial research consisted of examining behavioral and psychological factors related to exposure of workers to toxic substances, workers' abilities to detect occupational hazards, individual differences related to injury proneness and job stress, and intervention techniques for improving occupational safety and health behaviors (Cohen & Margolis, 1973). Early attempts to increase safety relied heavily on engineering strategies (Guastello, 1993) or a redesign of the environment. These strategies were often paired with enforcement procedures that provided disincentives or announcements of punitive consequences for not obeying policy. Policies, if consistently enforced, can be effective. However, in the domain of occupational safety, applications of punitive consequences for inappropriate behavior are inconsistent and rare, and when they are delivered, occur too late to be effective. Thus, the success of these programs has been modest at best. For the purpose of this paper, safety is defined as injury control. And, injuries are the permanent products (Cooper, Heron, & Heward, 1987) or outcomes of behaviors in the context of a dynamic physical and social environment. Behavior-based safety (BBS) presumes that promoting safe behaviors will reduce the frequency of at-risk behaviors that lead to injuries and thus result in a decrease in injuries (Reber & Wallin, 1983). The challenge of institutionalizing BBS is to produce long-term changes in environmental contingencies that will result in a reduction of work-related injuries. This paper will detail theoretical and practical issues involved in the institutionalization of BBS. To explore factors that facilitate institutionalization of BBS requires an understanding of both overt safety-related behaviors and corresponding verbal behaviors, and how contingencies in the organization exert control over each. In addition, we must have an operational definition of institutionalization. Boyce and Geller (2001) defined institutionalization by making it distinct from the concept of which they defined (in the context of increasing safe behaviors) as the occurrence of one or more target behaviors levels of performance after the withdrawal of contrived intervention contingencies. They suggested for maintenance to be claimed, levels above baseline need to be detectable through visual inspection of time-series data or reported in terms of statistical significance. This definition was distinguished from the concept of institutionalization, which Boyce and Geller (2001, p. 33) defined as the continuation of program-related contingencies by on-site workers after outside intervention agents or researchers have left the setting. This concept seems to parallel Holland's (1978) argument that we must intervene at the level of the controller of local contingencies, not at the level of the local contingencies controlling worker behavior, if we want to institutionalize BBS. Thus, according to Boyce and Geller (2001), like maintenance, institutionalization is not necessarily a natural by-product of behavior change techniques, but needs to be programmed using variations of the presentation or removal of behavioral antecedents and consequences that affect how safety is managed on a day-to-day basis. …