Safety leadership and safety voices: exploring the mediation role of proactive motivations. Issue 11 (2nd November 2021)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Bazzoli, Andrea; Curcuruto, Matteo
• Is Part Of: Journal of risk research. Volume 24:Issue 11(2021)
• Page Start: 1368
• Page End: 1387
• Publication Date: 2021-11-02
• Subjects: Safety communication -- safety leadership -- motivational mediators -- risk communication -- occupational safety; Technology -- Risk assessment -- Periodicals; Risk management -- Periodicals; Risk assessment -- Periodicals; 658.155
• DOI: 10.1080/13669877.2020.1863846
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1366-9877

Abstract

Abstract: Motivating employees to speak up about safety issues in organizations is a daunting task for both scholars and practitioners. Previous research has shown that safety leadership is one of the most studied predictors because of its wide-reaching effects on safety behaviors. This contribution aims to test whether Parker et al.'s proactive motivational states ('can do, ' 'reason to, ' and 'energized to' motivations) mediate the relationship between transformational, transactional, and passive safety leadership and an expanded set of safety voice behaviors, a form of upwards safety communication. We tested our model using data gathered from a sample ( N = 238) of US workers. Our results showed that (1) all three motivational states mediate the relationship between transformative leadership and promotive safety voice; (2) only 'reason to' and 'energized to' mediate the relationship between transactional leadership and preventive and prohibitive safety voices; and (3) only 'can do' motivations mediate the relationship between passive leadership and hostile safety voices. Implications for research and practice are also discussed: these results may be leveraged to improve practitioners' ability to motivate employees to speak up, a notoriously difficult task, by considering the employees' motivational drivers. We found that, in the safety realm, the relationship between a leader's behavior and their followers' safety behavior is partially mediated by employees' belief that they are able to broaden their workplace role, their feeling of ownership, and their engagement.