How Safety Incident Reporting Decisions Are Made: A Multilevel, Process-Oriented Perspective

Abstract The underreporting of workplace safety incidents remains a pervasive concern for various stakeholders, preventing workers from accessing healthcare benefits and hindering organizational leaders and policymakers from identifying systemic safety hazards. Using an abductive approach, this exploratory study examines incident reporting by framing it as a dynamic, environmentally constrained decision-making process shaped by the interplay of psychological, incident-related, organizational, policy, and economic considerations. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 34 employees from the shipbuilding and ship-repair industry. Qualitative analysis indicated that incident reporting decisions are asymmetrical in nature; the factors that inhibit reporting are not mere opposites of the factors that motivate reporting. Coding further revealed that individual factors defied assignment to a single level of analysis, and that more macro-level (e.g., contextual, organizational, policy, economic) and more micro-level (e.g., incident-related, psychological) considerations frequently co-occurred within participants’ accounts, reflecting the interconnected nature of cues across levels. Drawing on Simon’s (1990) bounded rationality framework, we identified four higher-order themes reflecting recurring patterns in reporting and nonreporting decisions. Additionally, the cues discussed by workers varied across referents, with differences noted between statements about reporting in general and those about oneself or a specific other individual reporting. We offer a conceptual model that depicts incident reporting as a bounded process, emphasizing that organizations must look beyond compliance to understand the complex constraints workers navigate in real reporting situations.