Road safety and the role of the employer: a case study of a western multinational in Oman

Global data highlights the scale of road traffic driving harm showing 1.24 million deaths, and a further 20 to 50 million injuries annually, making it the eight-leading cause of death globally. A range of studies has shed light on the causes of such harm, its main contributing factors and the prevention strategies that can be adopted to reduce it. However, little attention has been paid to the role played by employers in preventing work-related driving harm, despite the fact work-related driving accounts for a significant proportion of the harm flowing from road accidents.
This study represents an attempt to address this lack of research. The overall aim of the study was to shed new light on the role the employer can play in reducing work-related driving harm. Three supporting objectives were developed to support this aim. The first was to carry out a literature review encompassing a focus on the factors that influence road safety, both generally and in the work context, the potential role of employers in improving work-related driving, and the potential insights that can be gained into this role through findings contained in the literature on occupational health and safety management. The second was the undertaking of new empirical research focussed on the management of work-related safety, and, more particularly, its capacity to generate safety improvements and the factors that influence this capacity, through a case study. The third was to draw out the lessons from these conceptual and empirical strands of the research for current knowledge and future research regarding employer management of work-related driving. To support these aims and objectives three types of data collection was undertaken: semi-structured interviews, focus groups and descriptive statistical data on relevant performance outcomes. The study reported in this thesis has explicitly sought to address the first of these areas of weakness.
The findings contribute to the current literature in three ways. Firstly, by shedding new light on the capacity of employers to take effective action to improve work-related driving safety. Secondly, by providing new evidence on the value of various type of employer road safety interventions. Thirdly, and more widely, adding to existing knowledge regarding the value of promulgated guidance on the organisational level management of road safety, and the challenges that confront the effective implementation of such approaches. In doing so, the study draws out and confirms often unacknowledged linkages between the literature on work-related road safety and that on workplace health and safety.