Examining the relationship between managers’ commitment to safety, leadership style, and employees’ perception of managers’ commitment

Abstract

Introduction: Managers’ commitment to safety has been recognized as a focal concept that can play an important role as organizations strive to improve safety performance and prevent major accidents. When management is committed to safety, this shows employees that safety is an important value to the organization, which, in turn, affects employees’ safety behavior. Although the number of studies that explore the concept of safety commitment has considerably increased in recent years, the main question that remains to be answered is how managers can most effectively demonstrate their commitment to safety to employees and through what mechanisms. In this paper, we examined the relationship between managers’ commitment to safety and employees’ perceptions of managers’ commitment to safety, with a specific focus on the potential mediating effect of managers’ leadership style. Method: To explore the proposed relationship, we performed an explanatory quantitative study on a sample of 147 respondents from six safety–critical organizations in the EU. By employing a mediation model, we were able to gain a better understanding of the role that transformational leadership can play when managers demonstrate their safety commitment to employees. Results: The results showed a positive and significant relationship between managers’ commitment to safety and employees’ perceptions of managers’ commitment to safety. Furthermore, we found a statistically significant difference between managers’ and employees’ perceptions. The mediation analysis also confirmed that leadership style mediates the relationship between managers’ commitment to safety and employees’ perceptions of managers’ commitment. Conclusions: This paper adds to the understanding of how managers can demonstrate their commitment to safety through their leadership and how managers’ leadership style helps to shape employees’ perceptions. Practical Application: The findings highlight the relevance of managers’ safety commitment and transformational leadership style for employees’ perceptions of managers’ safety commitment, which is a known antecedent of safety performance.