The Show Must Go on: The Response to Fatalities in Multiple Employer Workplaces

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Abstract
This research analyses how complexities in the workplace affect organizational responses to trauma. The data ascertained organizational responses to worker deaths in workplaces where more than one organization was involved, namely the multiple employer workplace. In response to prior research's oversimplification of the complexities of workplaces, the research extends Coleman's (1987) notion of a power hierarchy within organizations to include a hierarchy among organizations which influences work site safety. Findings suggest that both the size of the organization and its position in the workplace hierarchy have a significant effect on how it responds to both issues of safety and legal liability.