The loss control approach to industrial safety

Bibliography: p. 175-191.Because industrial accident rates in many industrialized countries are apparently worsening, efforts are being made to devise new accident prevention techniques. One recent development is Loss Control, which involves a new management approach in which safety is incorporated in an integrated cost reduction programme to reduce all types of non-speculative risks incurred by the business. Shifting the appeal away from the traditional goal of preventing injuries, Loss Control attempts to lower accident rates through improved measures to raise productivity, and thus protect the safety of employees indirectly, by making the business more efficient. Since Loss Control emerged in the United States and Canada during the 1960's, it has been adopted by many firms in various countries throughout the world. Books and articles on the theory of Loss Control have challenged previous assumptions about the best ways to manage industrial safety, but unfortunately, no one has analyzed very carefully the advantages of the new approach over traditional methods, or published any detailed descriptions of specific firms to show how Loss Control has been implemented and what outcome it has actually had. The main objective here is to correct this deficiency, and evaluate Loss Control in both theory and practice