Examining Attitudes, Norms, and Control Toward Safety Behaviors as Mediators in the Leadership-Safety Motivation Relationship

Abstract

Research on occupational safety has been on the rise in recent years, owing to the high rates of deaths and disabilities that occur in the workplace. Findings suggest that unsafe behaviors and work-related accidents and injuries can be reduced through increasing employee safety motivation. Additional research has recognized leadership as a source of employee safety motivation. However, most studies have empirically assessed safety motivation and its antecedents using a cross-sectional design. Therefore, the aims of the current study were to examine effects of various safety-specific leader behaviors, following the full-range leadership model, on safety motivation using a time-lagged study design. Next, using theory of planned behavior as a theoretical framework, the present study examined the role of three mediating mechanisms, namely, attitudes, norms, and control toward safety behaviors, in the relationship between safety-specific leader behaviors and safety motivation. It was hypothesized that safetyspecific transformational, contingent reward, and management-by-exception active leadership would be positively related to safety motivation, whereas management-by-exception passive and laissez-faire leadership would be negatively related to safety motivation. In addition, it was proposed that the five leadership dimensions would exhibit an indirect relationship with employee safety motivation through their influence on attitudes, norms, and control toward safety behaviors.The sample for this study consisted of 168 members from Amazon's Mechanical Turk who were employed in high-risk industries and occupations. Participants completed the survey at two points in time, separated by three months. Results indicated that while transformational, contingent reward, and management-by-exception active leadership were positively related to safety motivation, management-by-exception passive and laissez-faire leadership did not exhibit any relationship with safety motivation. Furthermore, safety attitudes mediated the relationship between leader behaviors and safety motivation for transformational and management-byexception active leadership. Safety norms were found to mediate the relationship between all leadership dimensions and safety motivation. Safety control did not mediate the leadershipsafety motivation relationship for any of the five leadership dimensions. The findings of this study bolster support for importance of active leader behaviors in impacting employee safety motivation, as well as highlight the need for leadership development for enhancing employee safety performance. iv

An Investigation of Healthcare Worker Perception of Their Workplace Safety and Incidence of Injury

“…The literature supports the importance of safety climate, yet there remains an ongoing debate in the literature concerning the relative importance of factors characterizing positive safety climates (Halligan & Zecevic, 2011). Most authors agree that management and coworker commitment to safety practices are two factors that are critical to the employee safety experience (Christian et al, 2009;Cook et al, 2016;Hayes, Perandan, Smecko, & Trask, 1998;Huang et al, 2006;Sawhney & Cigularov, 2019). Our current study focused on these two factors of safety climate and their possible association with workrelated injuries and subsequent injury outcomes.…”

Speaking Up about Workplace Safety: An Experimental Study on Safety Leadership

“…All items were associated to a 7-point Likert scale. Promotive safety voice was measured by four items taken from the Simard and Marchand scale [69] and the Hofmann et al safety initiative scale [21]. Preventive safety voice was measured by four items taken from the Hofmann et al [26] and Tucker and Turner [27] voice scales.…”

“…Preventive safety voice was measured by four items taken from the Hofmann et al [26] and Tucker and Turner [27] voice scales. Prohibitive safety voice was measured by three items taken from the whistleblowing scale developed by Hofmann et al [21] and one item from the voice scale used by Tucker et al [70]. Hostile safety voice was measured by four items adapted from the Maynes and Podsakoff scale [29].…”

“…On the other hand, research on destructive leadership behaviors and their potential negative effect on safety conduct is underdeveloped, despite the potential disastrous consequences for subordinates, work-teams, and organizations as a whole [20]. In particular, laissez-faire (a kind of destructive leadership) seems to not have an effect on safety behaviors [20,21].…”

Safety Leadership and Safety Knowledge-Attitude-Behaviour (KAB) in Malaysia’s Manufacturing SMEs: A Higher Order Two-Stage Approach of PLS-SEM

“…A total of 5 items for safety coaching and safety concern with 6 items for safety monitoring were adapted and modified from T. C. Wu (2008). For safety behaviour, the 7 items were adapted from (Kao et al 2019), whilst 5 items of safety knowledge (Vinodkumar and Bhasi 2010) and 4 items of safety attitude (Sawhney and Cigularov 2019) were adapted and modified to suite the study settings. The details of questionnaire's items are presented in Appendix A.…”