Issues related to procedural systems have been found to contribute to incidents in many high-risk industries such as petrochemical, oil and gas, etc. While previous research has focused on understanding issues with procedural systems from the perspective of the workers (who are the end-users of procedures), most of this research suffers from samples that only include companies with programs focused on improving safety by improving procedures. These companies may have inherent differences in their safety practices and thus the experiences of these workers may not completely represent all workers’ experiences in this domain. The purpose of this study is to gain insights into the thoughts and perceptions from a representative and broad sample of workers concerning procedure use and purpose. To improve the generalizability of previous findings, interviews were conducted with workers from a broad range of high-risk process industries to investigate issues related to procedure adherence that may be present in companies not currently implementing. Findings from a qualitative data analysis provide support for the generalizability of issues previously discovered, such as: more experience workers being more likely to deviate; procedure quality being inconsistent; and the procedure revision process being problematic. However additional prominent issues were found as well. Most importantly, this study found that adherence to procedures is often motivated by potential liability issues instead of genuine concerns for safety in organizations and many deviations from procedures were due to pressure from immediate supervisors. These findings suggest a relationship between the effectiveness/quality of procedural systems and the safety climate of the organization or work unit.

已发现与程序系统有关的问题是许多高风险行业（例如石化，石油和天然气等）事件的起因。尽管先前的研究集中在从工人的角度（最终是谁的角度）理解程序系统的问题。 -（程序使用者），大部分这项研究都受到样本的影响，这些样本仅包括计划通过改善程序来改善安全性的公司。这些公司的安全实践可能存在固有差异，因此这些工人的经验可能无法完全代表该领域中所有工人的经验。这项研究的目的是从具有代表性的，广泛的有关程序使用和目的的工人样本中深入了解思想和观念。为了提高先前发现的一般性，与来自广泛的高风险流程行业的工人进行了访谈，以调查与程序遵守有关的问题，这些问题可能在当前未实施的公司中出现。定性数据分析的结果为以前发现的问题的普遍性提供了支持，例如：更多经验丰富的工人更有可能偏离；程序质量不一致；并且程序修改过程有问题。但是，还发现了其他突出的问题。最重要的是，这项研究发现，遵守程序通常是由潜在的责任问题引起的，而不是组织对安全性的真正关注，而程序的许多偏离是由于上级主管的压力。