Larger Firms, Greater Transparency: Firm Size Moderation of Employee Investment and Migrant-Female Workplace Fatalities

This study investigates the role of firm-level employee investment in shaping the reporting of fatal occupational injuries among migrant women, drawing on a merged panel dataset from the Orbis database and ILO statistics across 24 countries from 2009 to 2024. Employing fixed-effects regressions and system GMM for robustness, the analysis reveals a positive and significant association between lagged per-worker employee costs and reported fatalities, with a 10% increase in investment linked to a 1.09% rise in the log-transformed injury count. This counterintuitive finding is interpreted as evidence of enhanced transparency rather than increased harm, as higher-investment firms foster cultures that encourage documentation of incidents previously obscured by underreporting. The effect strengthens significantly with firm size, suggesting that larger organisations amplify governance mechanisms through superior administrative capacity. In European contexts, the association is more pronounced, highlighting the complementary role of institutional frameworks in promoting visibility. These results advance occupational health scholarship by disaggregating fatal outcomes and incorporating organisational contingencies, filling gaps in prior work focused on non-fatal injuries. Policy implications advocate for mandatory human-capital disclosures tied to safety reporting, particularly in sectors employing migrant women, contributing to sustainable development goals on decent work and gender equality.