The construction of Canadian business schools’ occupational health and safety curriculum

Abstract

This dissertation revisits the socio-historical origins and perspectives of Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) practice and its relationship to OHS studies in Canadian business schools by concentrating on the first Workmen’s Compensation Acts (WCA) in the early 20th century and the first comprehensive OHS Acts that emerged in the early 1970s. It was during these two eras of massive public unrest and openly expressed public fears about health and safety that the largest and most influential OHS regulatory bodies endeavored to provide solutions to the escalating OHS problems in Canada. This resulted in the regulatory agencies attempting to set rules and standards for work-related OHS behaviours and conduct. A critical hermeneutic analysis of five interpretive moments on the legal documents and related publications produced during the planning, passing, and implementation of these legislations, followed by a third analysis of the first Canadian business schools’ OHS curriculum documents that emerged in parallel with the later OHS laws, allow us to see how OHS business practices and studies were shaped. My findings reveal that while many OHS methods of the law makers remained the same, with some being strengthened and others being introduced, the underlying perspectives within these social practices remained unaltered for over a century. The Safety Pays ethos (the belief that it pays for business owners to engage in OHS activities) and the WorkSafe ethos (the belief that it is best for workers to take responsibility for their health and safety) have been woven deep within accepted business practices and studies related to OHS, the former considering OHS mechanisms that make financial sense and dismiss more humane practices that do not, and the latter promoting workers’ behaviour change over organization change. The 100 years of historical conflicts and compromises that resulted in today’s OHS “common-sense” business techniques and teachings can be explained through hegemonic processes.