Labour inspection and its impact on enterprises´compliance with safety regulations

​Few studies have paid attention to organizational compliance or non-compliance with safety regulations and the measures that can be taken to improve compliance at the organizational level. In Norway it is first and foremost the Norwegian Labour Inspection Authority which is responsible for ensuring that enterprises comply with the national safety regulations, such as the Working Environment Act and its accompanying regulations. This is done primarily by on-site inspections of the enterprises. On basis of two field experiments (N=291), which compare inspected versus previously uninspected enterprises, the present paper examines the impact that such control activity has on the enterprises’ compliance with national safety regulations.