Conclusion
Occupational Risk Prevention and Business Economic Performance — An Approach to the Issue Through Participatory Action Research

By focusing on local situations from the actors’ perspective, the participatory action research whose results we have presented offers a fresh approach to the relationship between prevention and performance. Rather than seeking causality, it analyzes the concrete conditions under which these two dimensions of corporate life converge or diverge: each company is unique; so are its levers for action.

From a top-down perspective, these action research studies reveal that prevention becomes a source of performance gains when stakeholders approach it based on the problems they encounter at work. They tend to replace a risk-based approach with a work-based approach.

From a bottom-up perspective, they show that creative solutions to ad hoc workplace problems yield combined gains in safety and efficiency, and that these gains are potentially transferable to other situations. Thus, work not only...