Safety-Specific Leadership, Goal Orientation, and Near-Miss Recognition: The Cross-Level Moderating Effects of Safety Climate.

Hongxu Lu,Yanbin Liu,Xiaoxuan Wang,Yan Shao,Ting Wu

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01136

Abstract

Near-miss recognition is an increasingly important area of research in safety management. Drawing on the self-determination theory, we ask whether and how safety-specific transformational leadership and safety-specific active transactional leadership promote near-miss recognition. We also explore the boundary condition by focusing on the moderating role of safety climate. We analyzed time-lagged data from 370 participants, and found that safety-specific transformational leadership enhances employees’ near-miss recognition (by enhancing their learning goal orientation), and that safety-specific active transactional leadership also positively influences employees’ near-miss recognition (by stimulating their performance goal orientation). In addition, we show that safety climate strengthens the relationship between safety-specific transactional leadership and employees’ performance goal orientation, but does not affect the relationship between safety-specific transformational leadership and employees’ learning goal orientation. We discuss the implications and limitations of the research.

Highlights

Near misses—events in which hazardous conditions could produce a negative outcome but do not (Dillon et al, 2014a)—occur frequently in the workplace (Phimister et al, 2003)
After controlling for safety-specific transformational leadership, we found that as predicted, learning goal orientation was positively related to near-miss recognition (β = 0.04, p < 0.01, Table 2)
Consistent with previous research showing that safety climate can enhance the positive effects and reduce the negative effects of leadership on employees’ safety performance (Zohar, 2002), our findings suggest that a strong safety climate can enhance the effect of safety-specific active transactional leadership on performance goal orientation

Summary

Introduction

Near misses—events in which hazardous conditions could produce a negative outcome but do not (Dillon et al, 2014a)—occur frequently in the workplace (Phimister et al, 2003). To find ways of promoting near-miss recognition, researchers have begun to explore its antecedents and related contextual factors (Dillon et al, 2013, 2014a; Madsen et al, 2016). Despite this progress, we believe that research on near-miss recognition can be improved in several ways. Prior research has confirmed the critical influence of Safety-Specific Leadership and Near-Miss Recognition leadership on safety performance (Barling et al, 2002; Kelloway et al, 2006; Inness et al, 2010), it remains unclear whether and how leadership affects near-miss recognition. Our research explores how and when two key safety leadership styles (safety-specific transformational leadership and safety-specific active transactional leadership) influence near-miss recognition

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion