Psychosocial safety climate as a moderator of the moderators: Contextualizing JDR models and emotional demands effects

Abstract

Psychosocial safety climate (PSC) is a facet‐specific aspect of organizational climate that pertains to employees’ psychological health. We sought to deepen our understanding of how and when resources function by considering the role of PSC as a contextual factor for job demands‐resources model. We explained this using two different mechanisms – PSC as a resource passageway (i.e., channelling, supplying, bolstering, complementing, compensating resources) or PSC as a safety signal (i.e., enabling resource use) effect. Using longitudinal data from 429 Malaysian health care workers from 53 teams and hierarchical linear modelling (HLM), we found team PSC was a stronger moderator of emotional demands than control or rewards on psychological health problems (emotional exhaustion and somatic symptoms), after controlling for the baseline outcomes. A three‐way interaction of team PSC at Time 1 with demands and resources (rewards only) at Time 2 showed that PSC is able to moderate the moderation relationship of demands and resources. Specifically, PSC, as a resource passageway, is providing a range of resources, that likely to compensate and complement low rewards. Hence, when both PSC and rewards were low, emotional demands had the strongest effect on psychological health. This result is robust as it was validated using HLM and split samples of PSC at the upper level. Given the important contextual role of PSC as a ‘moderator of the moderators’, building PSC should be the focus of workplace interventions to protect the psychological health of workers. Practitioner points Psychosocial safety climate may compensate for job resources, particularly rewards in an organization to protect workers’ psychological health. Psychosocial safety climate buffers the detrimental effect of emotional demands on workers’ psychological health better than rewards and control.

The Role of Sense of Power in Alleviating Emotional Exhaustion in Frontline Managers: A Dual Mediation Model

“…According to the JD-R model [21], first-line managers usually have high job demands (e.g., heavy workload, work stress, and emotional demands), but few job resources (e.g., rewards, decision authority, and social support). As a result, they will easily suffer physical and mental health problems such as emotional exhaustion [21,49,50]. As power-holders that powerless subordinates rely on in the organization, frontline managers are in charge of making professional and predictable decisions, and guide subordinates to increase organizational effectiveness [51].…”

The dynamic interplay of physical and psychosocial safety climates in frontline healthcare

“…It is evident that overcoming both psychosocial and physical contributing factors is a challenge for improving health and safety in the healthcare sector, but a barrier to progress is the current failure to integrate the lines of inquiry. On the one hand, the PSC literature has mainly examined the structural features of work environments and jobs and their relationships to indicators of psychological health Dollard & Bailey, 2014;Bailey, Dollard, McLinton & Richards, 2015;Loh, Idris, Dollard & Isahak, 2018). On the other hand, safety research has predominantly investigated PhSC and its connection to physical health, operationalized in terms of accidents and injuries (Nahrgang, et al 2011).…”

Psychosocial Safety Climate and Occupational Health

“…While job resources have been well established as an effective moderator of job demands (Bakker and Demerouti 2016), scholars are interested to know what might enhance or hinder the function of job resources. This idea was tested by proposing PSC as the "moderator of the moderators" of the relationship between job demands and its outcomes (Loh et al 2018)a three-way interaction between PSC, job resources, and job demands. Two mechanisms could be used to explain how PSC serves as an important boundary condition for job resources, namely, the safety signal theory or the resource passageway.…”

“…Two mechanisms could be used to explain how PSC serves as an important boundary condition for job resources, namely, the safety signal theory or the resource passageway. Firstly, PSC as a safety signal (Loh et al 2018) provides cues about the psychological safety in a workplace to approach, utilize, and request more resources. As a working environment that exhibits concern about psychological health, resources are often available and may be easily assessed in a high PSC context.…”

“…Resource caravan passageway is a concept where the social ecology of an organization is useful for resources accumulation, utilization, and bolstering the effect of resources. Under this assumption, Loh et al (2018) found that PSC acts as a resource caravan passageway which may bolster, compensate, and complement the effect of other resources in the workplaces. In a sample of 429 Malaysian healthcare workers from 53 workgroups, Loh and colleagues conducted hierarchical linear modelling using two-wave longitudinal data.…”