Leading the way to safety : an investigation of S.A.F.E.R. Leadership

Abstract

Work related injuries and fatalities can cause significant human suffering as well as considerable social and economic costs. A growing body of research has demonstrated that leaders can play an important role in enhancing safety at work. However, most studies have relied on existing models of leadership, such as transformational leadership, to investigate the impact of leadership on safety outcomes. Furthermore, most studies have used cross-sectional research designs, which is a gap in the literature considering how the relationships between leaders and followers occur over time. This dissertation aimed to address these gaps over the course of three studies. In study 1, a new scale of safety leadership was developed based on the S.A.F.E.R Leadership Model (Wong, Kelloway, & Makhan, 2015). The S.A.F.E.R Leadership Scale demonstrated good convergent and concurrent validity, as well as incremental validity above and beyond two existing measures of safety leadership. Study 2 adopted a cross-lagged research design to investigate the temporal relationships between safety leadership, safety climate, and safety performance (i.e., safety compliance and safety participation) using a sample of transit workers. The findings suggest that S.A.F.E.R leadership predicts safety climate and performance over time, demonstrating predictive validity, and the direction of causality is from S.A.F.E.R leadership to the outcomes, and not vice versa. Study 3 also adopted a temporal design, examining impact of workload on S.A.F.E.R leadership in a training context. An analysis of the post-training growth trajectories of workload and S.A.F.E.R leadership suggested that workload was not a barrier to transfer of training for nurse leaders. Taken together, this dissertation demonstrates that the S.A.F.E.R Leadership Model is a viable model of safety leadership that is different from the existing conceptualizations of safety leadership, and provides a psychometrically sound measure of S.A.F.E.R Leadership that can be used in training to enhance safety behaviours and outcomes in organizations.