The reciprocal relationship between safety behaviour and person-job fit: A self-regulation perspective

Abstract

Frontline work is defined by its safety criticality and is increasingly relied on by our economies and societies to maintain efficiency and performance. Despite the importance of these jobs, little is known about the factors that drive safety behaviours dynamically in safety critical environments, and how frontline workers shape their alignment with the core requirements of their job to execute such behaviours. In this paper, we build on self-regulation theory and employ a multilevel (i.e., between-person versus within-person) design to investigate reciprocal relationships between safety behaviours and person-job fit. Across a total sample of n = 1139 temporal data points for 86 (daily diary study) and 81 (weekly diary study) frontline police and nurse workers we find evidence for reverse causality (i.e., safety behaviours predicting person-job fit) at the within-person level. Furthermore, we find support for both normal (i.e., person-job fit predicting safety behaviours) and reverse causality at the between-person level of analysis. Overall, results across both levels illustrate how frontline workers self-regulate their safety behaviour and person-job fit within safety critical environments.