Asymmetries in safety outcomes and learning from failure in subcontracting hierarchies

Subcontracting distributes production activities across firm boundaries, but little is known about how positions within subcontracting hierarchies are associated with occupational safety outcomes and learning from failure. Drawing on resource dependence theory and organizational learning research, this study examines workplace‐level panel data from South Korean manufacturing between 2015 and 2019. Conditional fixed‐effects Poisson models show that prime contractors and prime subcontractors experience fewer industrial accident casualties than noncontractors, whereas subcontractors do not differ significantly from them, revealing an asymmetric rather than monotonic pattern across positions. Learning from failure also varies by position. The negative relationship between prior own accident experience and subsequent casualties is stronger for subcontractors than for noncontractors, consistent with stronger direct learning. In the fully specified model, the negative relationship between other workplaces' accident experience and subsequent casualties is stronger for prime contractors, consistent with stronger vicarious learning. These findings identify subcontracting position as a structural condition associated with both recorded safety outcomes and the source of failure experience most closely related to subsequent improvement. They also suggest that safety‐learning systems should be tailored to firms' positions and connect local accident learning with cross‐firm coordination.