Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Safety Science journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/safety Evaluating effectiveness of OHSAS 18001 on safety performance in manufacturing companies in Iran Abolfazl Ghahramani a, ⁎ , Simo Salminen b a Occupational Health Engineering Department, Urmia University of Medical Sciences, Urmia, Iran b Finnish Institute of Occupational Health, Helsinki, Finland ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Safety culture Certification Management commitment Lagging Leading ABSTRACT The application of occupational health and safety management systems (OHSMSs) in recent decades has led to the successful control of workplace injuries in high-income countries. The occupational health and safety as- sessment series (OHSAS) 18001 has gained a considerable acceptance worldwide, and a large number of or- ganizations have implemented the requirements of it. However, few studies have examined the effectiveness of OHSAS 18001 on safety performance in certified organizations. The present study was conducted in three OHSAS 18001-certified and three control manufacturing companies to evaluate the effectiveness of OHSAS 18001 on the improvement of safety performance indicators of occupational injury rate (OIR), safety climate, occupational health and safety (OHS) practices. The results did not indicate a significant effect of OHSAS 18001 certification on the OIR and safety climate level has not improved 4–9 years after certification. The certified companies had better OHS activity rates compared with the control companies. The assessment of OHSAS 18001 activity rates showed that the certified companies fulfill about fifty percent of the requirements of the OHSAS 18001 standard. It can be concluded that having an OHSAS 18001 certification cannot be a guarantee for achieving a good performance on safety. The characteristics of a certified organization in how to implement and maintain the requirements of the OHSAS 18001 standard is a decisive factor for the effectiveness of it on the improvement of safety performance. 1. Introduction Occupational injuries are a major problem worldwide that parti- cularly impact the developing countries (Concha-Barrientos et al., 2004), and require comprehensive actions to control and prevent them. In recent decades, the application of the occupational health and safety management systems (OHSMSs) has led to the successful control of workplace injuries in high-income countries (Dalrymple et al., 1998). The system also introduces a systematic structure for the effective management of safety and health in adopting organizations. The oc- cupational health and safety assessment series (OHSAS) 18001 as a world-recognized OHSMS has gained a considerable acceptance after its formation in 1999, and a large number of organizations have im- plemented the requirements of this British standard (BSI, 2007; Chang and Liang, 2009; Hohnen and Hasle, 2011). OHSAS 18001 certification is done about 90.000 companies in 127 different countries. However, international standards organization (ISO) committee had started the work to develop a new standard ISO 45001, which will replace OHSAS 18001 standard. Many organizations were contributed to the technical committee in charge of developing the ISO 45001 that issued in March 2018 (Bureau Veritas Finland, 2017; ISO, 2018). However, few studies have examined the effectiveness of OHSAS 18001 on safety perfor- mance in certified organizations (Fernández-Muñiz et al., 2012). The main objective of the OHSAS 18001 standard is minimizing the occupational health and safety (OHS) risks and assuring the protection of human resources (BSI, 2007; De Oliveira, 2013). The OHSAS 18001 standard offers a good framework for improvement of safety perfor- mance in organizations. It is directed to control OHS risks in a proactive way and to improve OHS performance in adopting organizations (Vinodkumar and Bhasi, 2011). Albeit these objectives are in paper and the achievement of a good OHS performance depends on the appro- priate implementation and maintenance of the requirements of the standard in an adopting workplace. Frick (2011) criticized the systems and stated that most of OHSMSs aim to prevent occupational injuries and illnesses, but the objectives in paper differ from practice. Studies have identified the influencing factors on the successful implementation and maintenance of OHSMSs including OHSAS 18001 (Bluff, 2003; Chen et al., 2009; De Oliveira, 2013; Fernández-Muñiz https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssci.2018.10.021 Received 28 September 2017; Received in revised form 4 October 2018; Accepted 21 October 2018 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: Ghahramani@umsu.ac.ir (A. Ghahramani), Simo.salminen@pp.inet.fi (S. Salminen). Safety Science 112 (2019) 206–212 Available online 08 November 2018 0925-7535/ © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. T