Abstract
Despite the documented relationship between active-approaching leadership behaviors and workplace safety, few studies have addressed whether and when passive-avoidant leadership affects safety behavior. This study examined the relationship between two types of safety-specific passive-avoidant leadership, i.e., safety-specific leader reward omission (SLRO) and safety-specific leader punishment omission (SLPO), and safety compliance, as well as the moderating effects of an individual difference (safety moral belief) and an organizational difference (organizational size) in these relationships. These predictions were tested on a sample of 704 steel workers in China. The results showed that, although both SLRO and SLPO are negatively related to safety compliance, SLPO demonstrated a greater effect than SLRO. Moreover, we found that steel workers with high levels of safety moral belief were more resistant to the negative effects of SLRO and SLPO on safety compliance. Although steel workers in large enterprises were more resistant to the negative effects of SLPO than those in small enterprises, the SLRO-compliance relationship is not contingent upon organizational size. The current study enriched the safety leadership literature by demonstrating the detrimental and relative effects of two types of safety-specific passive-avoidant leadership on safety compliance and by identifying two boundary conditions that can buffer these relationships among steel workers.
Highlights
Injuries and deaths resulting from workplace accidents have always been one of the most costly issues worldwide [1,2,3]
More studies are needed to examine the generalizability of previous research findings with workers from different industries. To narrow these gaps in the existing literature, the current study aims to examine the effects of two forms of safety-specific passive-avoidant leadership on follower safety compliance behavior and examine how one organization characteristic and one individual difference moderate these relationships among 704 steel workers in
The purpose of our study was to examine the relationships between safety-specific leader reward and punishment omission and followers’ safety compliance behaviors in the steel manufacturing context and how these associations may vary among steel workers at different levels of safety moral beliefs and organizational size
Summary
Injuries and deaths resulting from workplace accidents have always been one of the most costly issues worldwide [1,2,3]. Several studies have established that unsafe acts and conditions or a continuous violations of safety regulations are elements that often lead to incidents, injuries, near-misses or disasters [4,5,6,7]. Steel workers are often exposed to high temperature, high dust, high noise, toxic gas and explosive, dangerous sources, which more likely lead to group incidents, injuries and burns than other manufacturing industries [8,9,10]. To reduce accidents and injuries, it is essential for steel workers to increase safety compliance behaviors [2,9,11,12]. A great deal of evidence confirms that safety compliance is associated with fewer accidents and injuries [12,14,15]
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