Rank Has Its Privileges: Explaining Why Laboratory Safety Is a Persistent Challenge

Environmental, health, and safety management systems have become common in research settings to improve laboratory safety through systematic observation and self-regulation. However, there is scant empirical evidence assessing whether these surveillance and inspection systems meet their intended objectives. Using data from safety inspections in research laboratories at a large university, we investigate whether conducting inspections, and recording and reporting findings back to the formally responsible actors (i.e., principal investigator scientists) lead to the improvement of regulatory compliance. Our analyses identify a population of well-funded, high-status, tenured researchers whose non-compliant practices persist. Our interviews with environmental, health, and safety personnel suggest that higher-status actors disengage from the regulatory system, the compliance officers, and the system’s feedback process by their variable recognition and acknowledgment of relevant regulations, attention to the inspection reports, and responses to the feedback concerning repair of the unsafe situation. This study extends previous literature on regulatory compliance by providing evidence for the role of power and status in explaining actor-level non-compliant behavior.