Advancing Safety in SMEs Through Unitised Integration: Research Based on the SME Safety Alliance in Pukou District, Nanjing City

Unitised integration is a management model used to address the fragmentation of multiple management entities in complex environments. Small- and medium-sized enterprise (SME) safety alliances play an important role in centralised management and cost reduction in the safety management of SMEs, which are large in number, widely distributed, and small in volume. On the basis of the investigation and analysis of the current situation of SMEs’ own safety management and external supervision, as well as the market situation of safety service institutions, this paper explores the fragmentation problem of SMEs’ safety management. An idealised framework for the unitised integration of safety management in SMEs is proposed theoretically, and the model is tested and its limitations are discussed through a field investigation of the operational mechanism and problems of the SME Safety Alliance in Pukou District, Nanjing City, China, taking the SME safety alliance as a case study, with a view to proposing policy recommendations for the optimisation and promotion of the model. The unitised integration of safety management can help promote the adaptation of safety service supply and demand, thereby reducing the cost of safety management for SMEs, promoting the effective implementation of the main responsibility for safety, alleviating the pressure of production safety supervision, and ultimately promoting the further improvement of safety supervision and management systems for SMEs.