Supervisory interpretation of safety climate versus employee safety climate perception: Association with safety behavior and outcomes for lone workers

Research has shown that safety climate predicts safety behavior and safety outcomes in a variety of settings. Prior studies have focused on traditional work environments in which employees and supervisors work in the same location and the mechanisms through which safety climate affects behavior are largely understood. However, the nascent research examining safety climate among lone workers suggests that safety climate may have some uniqueness in this context. Based on leadership theories and utilizing an exploratory approach, this study increases our understanding of the lone worker context by examining employee perception of safety climate and supervisory interpretation of safety climate; how similar or different they are, and how they are related to important safety outcomes. Surveys were administered to a matched sample of 1831 truck drivers and their 219 supervisors at four different trucking companies. Objective data on employee injuries were collected six months after survey administration. The results provided support for the measurement equivalence of the Trucking Safety Climate Scale at the organization level for both employee and supervisor respondents. For both organization- and group-level safety climate, employee perceptions of safety climate and supervisory interpretation of safety climate were significantly different, such that supervisors provided higher ratings for both safety climate sub-scales. Further, only employee safety climate perceptions significantly predicted self-reported safety behavior (directly) and objective injury outcomes (indirectly). This suggests that when trying to gauge and improve upon a trucking company’s safety climate, we should rely on employee perspectives, rather than supervisory interpretation, of safety climate.     

High-performance work systems and occupational safety

Two studies were conducted investigating the relationship between high-performance work systems (HPWS) and occupational safety. In Study 1, data were obtained from company human resource and safety directors across 138 organizations. LISREL VIII results showed that an HPWS was positively related to occupational safety at the organizational level. Study 2 used data from 189 front-line employees in 2 organizations. Trust in management and perceived safety climate were found to mediate the relationship between an HPWS and safety performance measured in terms of personal-safety orientation (i.e., safety knowledge, safety motivation, safety compliance, and safety initiative) and safety incidents (i.e., injuries requiring first aid and near misses). These 2 studies provide confirmation of the important role organizational factors play in ensuring worker safety.     

伦理型领导、工具主义伦理气氛与员工不道德行为：内部人身份感知的调节作用

通过对379名企业员工的问卷调查,探讨伦理型领导对员工不道德行为的影响机制。结果发现：伦理型领导与工具主义伦理气氛显著负相关;组织伦理气氛在伦理型领导与不道德行为之间起部分中介作用;内部人身份感知调节了组织伦理气氛在伦理型领导与不道德行为关系的中介作用。内部人身份感知水平越高,组织伦理气氛的中介作用越强。     

伦理型领导如何影响员工创造力:心理安全感与关系的作用

基于认知评价理论,以配对的328组员工为样本,探讨了伦理型领导与员工创造力的关系,及心理安全感、上下级关系在这一关系中的作用。结论:伦理型领导与员工心理安全感正相关;上下级关系与伦理型领导的交互作用强化了员工的心理安全感;心理安全感中介了伦理型领导对员工创造力的影响;上下级关系调节了心理安全感对伦理型领导与创造力关系间的中介作用。     

心理弹性如何影响员工创造力：心理安全感与创造力自我效能感的作用

摘 要 通过对350名知识型员工及其领导的配对问卷调查,探讨心理弹性对知识型员工创造力的作用机制。结果表明,心理弹性对心理安全感有显著的正向影响;心理安全感完全中介了心理弹性对创造力的影响;创造力自我效能感调节了心理安全感对创造力的正向作用;创造力自我效能感调节了心理安全感在心理弹性与创造力之间的中介作用。     

When Does a Proactive Personality Enhance an Employee’s Whistle-Blowing Intention?: A Cross-Level Investigation of the Employees in Chinese Companies

To identify the boundary conditions for proactive employees making whistle-blowing decisions, we developed a cross-level model comprising employee proactive personality and two types of whistle-blowing intentions that incorporates the influences of organizational- and individual-level attributes. Analyses of data collected from 432 Chinese employees in 32 companies indicated that proactive personality was positively related to internal whistle-blowing intention and even more positively related to external whistle-blowing intention when individuals were working in organizations characterized by an instrumental ethical climate and employees with a high level of moral identity.     

Testing extrinsic and intrinsic motivation as explanatory variables for the safety climate–safety performance relationship among long-haul truck drivers

The paper tests the proposition that the organizational climate-behavior relationship is based primarily on extrinsic motivation induced by climate perceptions. Using safety climate as exemplar, the effect of climate-induced extrinsic motivation was compared with that of engagement-induced intrinsic motivation on safety behavior and subsequent injury outcomes. Using a sample of long-haul truck drivers representing lone employees, (individual-level) safety climate perceptions and employee engagement predicted safety behavior, which mediated their effect on subsequently measured road injury outcomes. Consistent with meta-analytic evidence suggesting a non-symmetric compensatory relationship between extrinsic and intrinsic motivation, high safety climate undermined the effect of engagement on safety behavior with the reverse being true under low safety climate. This resulted in a moderation effect of engagement on the strength of relationship between climate perceptions and safety behavior. Theoretical and practical implications for climate, engagement, and lone work research are discussed.     

工具主义伦理气氛对员工沉默行为的影响——犬儒主义和传统性的作用

基于社会控制理论,运用问卷调查法,通过分析308组配对数据,探讨工具主义伦理气氛对员工沉默行为的影响机制。结果发现:工具主义伦理气氛对沉默行为有正向作用;工具主义伦理气氛对犬儒主义有正向作用;犬儒主义在工具主义伦理气氛与沉默行为之间起部分中介作用;传统性调节了犬儒主义与沉默行为的关系,也调节了犬儒主义在工具主义伦理气氛与沉默行为关系的中介作用。     

“Walking the talk”: the role of frontline supervisors in preventing workplace accidents

ABSTRACT

Most existing safety research focuses on climate and leadership, with most leadership studies investigating transformational leadership, which is likely to be more impactful when exhibited by executives that by frontline supervisors. Therefore, focusing on frontline supervisors, we investigate how leaders who “walk the talk”, by directly modelling safety behaviours, might encourage subordinates to behave more safely. Using a three-level sample consisting of 579 employees and their supervisors working in 161 groups within 53 organizations, we test a multisource multilevel indirect effects model. Results indicate that safety climate and supervisors modelling safety compliance explain unique variance in safety outcomes. We then addressed an unanswered question concerning whether safety climate is best conceptualized as a group or organizational-level phenomenon, finding that the group-level assessment of safety climate explained more variance in safety outcomes than the organizational-level assessment of safety climate. Both sets of results are consistent with social information processing theory and social learning theory, which highlight the immediate social environment’s influence on employees’ behaviour.     

Economic Predictors of Differences in Interview Faking Between Countries: Economic Inequality Matters,Not the State of Economy

Many companies recruit employees from different parts of the globe, and faking behavior by potential employees is a ubiquitous phenomenon. It seems that applicants from some countries are more prone to faking compared to others, but the reasons for these differences are largely unexplored. This study relates country-level economic variables to faking behavior in hiring processes. In a cross-national study across 20 countries, participants (N = 3,839) reported their faking behavior in their last job interview. This study used the random response technique (RRT) to ensure participants’ anonymity and to foster honest answers regarding faking behavior. Results indicate that general economic indicators (gross domestic product per capita [GDP] and unemployment rate) show negligible correlations with faking across the countries, whereas economic inequality is positively related to the extent of applicant faking to a substantial extent. These findings imply that people are sensitive to inequality within countries and that inequality relates to faking, because inequality might actuate other psychological processes (e.g., envy) which in turn increase the probability for unethical behavior in many forms.     

The impact of safety climate on safety related driving behaviors

This study explored the impact of safety climate, age and tenure as a driver on safety related driving behaviors among 290 company drivers in Ghana. The study found a negative relationship between safety climate and studied work-related behaviors: speeding, rule violation, inattention and driving whiles tired. The study also found that age significantly predicted the extent to which drivers engaged in safety related driving behaviors. The results showed that young drivers (aged 20–35 years) engage more in risky driving behaviors relative to adult drivers (aged 36–60 years). The study also found that the tenure of a driver did not significantly affect work-related driver behaviors. The findings from this study suggests that in the quest to reduce safety related traffic accidents and its resulting consequences such as injuries, absenteeism and deaths, a critical organizational variable that organizations can use to mitigate this canker is commitment to and strict adherence to safety practices and regulations. By extension, the findings suggest, Ghana’s commitment to safety practices and enforcement of safety regulations and policies among others can help the country win the battle against road accidents.     

Cross-National Explorations of the Impact of Affect at Work Using the State-Trait Emotion Measure: A Coordinated Series of Studies in the United States,China, and Romania

Drawing on the social information process perspective, we hypothesized that transformational leadership fosters psychological safety climate leading to enhanced individual-level creative process engagement. Furthermore, psychological safety climate was hypothesized to strengthen the relationship between creative process engagement and employee creativity. The hypothesized model was tested with data obtained from a sample of 358 employees and their supervisors from two organizations in the People’s Republic of China. Results of hierarchical linear modeling analysis revealed that transformational leadership influenced creative process engagement via psychological safety climate. Furthermore, psychological safety climate moderated the creative process engagement–creativity relationship such that the relationship was stronger in groups with high rather than low psychological safety climate.     

Development and test of a model linking safety-specific transformational leadership and occupational safety

The authors developed, tested, and replicated a model in which safety-specific transformational leadership predicted occupational injuries in 2 separate studies. Data from 174 restaurant workers (M age = 26.75 years, range = 15-64) were analyzed using structural equation modeling (LISREL 8; K. G. J?reskog & D. S?rbom, 1993) and provided strong support for a model whereby safety-specific transformational leadership predicted occupational injuries through the effects of perceived safety climate, safety consciousness, and safety-related events. Study 2 replicated and extended this model with data from 164 young workers from diverse jobs (M age = 19.54 years, range = 14-24). Safety-specific transformational leadership and role overload were related to occupational injuries through the effects of perceived safety climate, safety consciousness, and safety-related events.     

UNEQUAL ATTENDANCE: THE RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN RACE, ORGANIZATIONAL DIVERSITY CUES, AND ABSENTEEISM

Although prior evidence has demonstrated racial differences in employee absenteeism, no existing research explains this phenomenon. The present study examined the roles of 2 diversity cues related to workplace support—perceived organizational value of diversity and supervisor–subordinate racial/ethnic similarity—in explicating this demographic difference among 659 Black, White, and Hispanic employees of U.S. companies. Blacks reported significantly more absences than their White counterparts, but this difference was significantly more pronounced when employees believed their organizations placed little value on diversity. Moreover, in a form of expectancy violation, the Black–White difference was significant only when employees had racially similar supervisors (and thus would expect their companies to value diversity) and perceived that the organization placed little value on diversity.     

Conflict resolution and procedural fairness in Japanese work organizations

Abstract: The purpose of this study was to examine short‐term and long‐term effects of perceived fairness, and to examine relational factors’ effects of procedural fairness in organizational conflicts between employees and supervisors among the Japanese. We asked 154 Japanese employees working in companies to rate their perception of conflicts as well as attitudes towards their own companies. We found that both perception of procedural and distributive fairness produced short‐term effects (satisfaction with outcome of conflicts) and long‐term effects (positive organizational attitudes). Perceived procedural fairness was increased by appropriate treatment of the supervisors, but our prediction that this effect would be moderated by the employees’ identification with organizations was not supported.     

The role of the psychosocial safety climate in coping with workplace bullying: A grounded theory and sequential tree analysis

Workplace bullying is a severe workplace stressor that affects both employees and organizations. Despite a wealth of research of the prevalence of workplace bullying and its correlates, little research has been done on the process of bullying. In a qualitative study, based on the grounded theory approach, we examine the role of psychosocial safety climate (PSC) in influencing employees’ coping strategies and ultimately the escalation of bullying. Interviews were conducted with 20 Malaysian workers from various organizational settings, who also completed a 12-item PSC scale. The analysis revealed that coping strategies took the form of a modified exit-voice-loyalty-neglect (EVLN) model, whereby acquiescence replaced loyalty in the matrix. In turn, five escalation patterns of bullying were identified, linked to the coping options used by employees. We found that employees tended to voice in high PSC contexts, which led to swift resolution of bullying. In low PSC contexts, employees tended to neglect or acquiesce before exiting the organization because the bullying remained unresolved, which was revealed in four different trajectories of escalation without resolution. These results emphasize the influence of the organizational climate for psychosocial safety in shaping the coping options available to bullied workers, and the likely success of these strategies.     

Supervisors' behavior during new employees' socialization: scale development

This study developed a 16-item scale to measure specifically the construct of Intended Socialization Behavior of the supervisor during new employees' socialization. Data were collected from 178 subjects representing six midwestern organizations. The organizations ranged in size from 100 to 1,001+ employees and represented multiple industries. The subjects included 74 subordinates (with less than 1 year tenure at the organizations) and 93 supervisors. Both the subordinate and the supervisor groups were predominantly male, and the subordinate group was primarily younger than the supervisor group.     

Does work–family conflict mediate the relationship between work–family culture and self‐reported distress? Evidence from five Finnish organizations

This study examined whether perceived work–family conflict would function as a mediator in the link between work–family culture perceptions and self‐reported distress. Data were obtained from employees (N=1,297) of five Finnish organizations representing both the public (local social and health care, school, and labour departments) and the private sectors (paper mill, IT company). The results showed that perceived work–family conflict functioned as a partial mediator between employees' perceptions of work–family culture and self‐reported distress in two organizations (i.e. in the social and health care department and paper mill), whereas the relationship turned out to be direct in the other three organizations (i.e. the education, labour departments and IT company). Thus, a supportive work–family culture was related directly and indirectly, through reduced work–family conflict, to the well‐being of employees.     

The impact of sleep quality,fatigue and safety climate on the perceptions of accident risk among seafarers

IntroductionSeafaring is an extremely demanding profession that takes place in one of the most dangerous work environments possible. The unpredictable and demanding working conditions foster a high potential for risks and accidents.ObjectivesTo examine how sleep quality, fatigue and safety climate combine to influence perceptions of risk among seafarers.MethodParticipants were 151 seafarers working in the deck or machine departments on board 11 ships belonging to a Norwegian company. Questionnaires were administered at two different time points, approximately one week apart.ResultsPerceptions of risk of personal injuries and ship accidents increase when seafarers are fatigued. We also found that fatigue is related to poor sleep quality and that safety climate predicted both sleep quality and fatigue one week later.ConclusionsThe findings point to the importance for maritime organizations to be cognizant of the causes and consequences of fatigue among their employees, and that that policies and prioritizations are being perceived and interpreted by seafarers and may influence their sleep quality and vigilance when working at sea.     

互联网企业玩兴氛围对创新行为的跨层次作用机制

互联网企业通过营造快乐愉悦的玩兴氛围, 推动员工持续创新, 以期组织目标的实现。然而, 现有玩兴氛围与员工创新行为关系的研究以理论分析为主, 缺乏实证研究, 进展相对缓慢。在回顾组织管理领域玩兴研究成果的基础上, 开展三个方面的研究：研究一基于组织氛围理论和玩兴活动特征, 开发中国情境下互联网企业的团队玩兴氛围量表。研究二立足于团队层次, 依据资源保存理论重点探讨了玩兴氛围对员工创新行为的跨层次作用机制。研究三从创造力成分模型出发, 引入个体思维方式和多重认同, 探讨激发员工创新行为的边界条件。研究结果发展了中国互联网企业团队玩兴氛围的概念, 促进了玩兴氛围理论的发展, 为互联网类企业营造玩兴氛围以激发创新行为提供理论支持和实践启示。