ABSTRACT
The importance of improving workplace health and safety conditions through properly designed interventions is clear and has been widely discussed in literature. The debate has recently focused on the need of improving the efficacy and the effectiveness of Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) interventions. Several approaches have been proposed; among those, the sharing of knowledge among companies and in particular the sharing of knowledge on empirically tested interventions is gaining an increasing attention. Indeed, the sharing of knowledge on empirically tested interventions avoids that limited resources are wasted reinventing the wheel or going bust in the attempt. Currently there are several databases collecting information on empirically tested interventions; however, the effectiveness of these initiatives has been questioned and calls have been for more extensive research on this topic. In particular, there is a need for new theoretical models structuring the knowledge so that it can be effectively shared by means of databases. This paper analyses the limitations of the existing theoretical models and provides guidelines and future directions for the development of new models. These guidelines originate from the combination of two emerging fields of research: the first deals with the use of ontologies in the enterprise modelling and the second deals with new paradigms for the evaluation of OHS interventions, such as the realistic evaluation or the analysis of the barriers to the implementation of interventions.
