The influence of leadership style on safety climate, level of trust, and employee engagement.
Keywords
Loading...
Authors
Issue Date
2021-08-23
Language
en
Document type
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Title
ISSN
Volume
Issue
Startpage
Endpage
DOI
Abstract
Current study aimed to investigate the influence of leadership style on employee engagement
via safety climate and employee trust. This potential effect was measured by means of a survey
including Spanish and Dutch respondents in order to include probable moderating effects of
culture in terms of varying levels of uncertainty avoidance. A survey was conducted aiming at
discovering relationships between previously mentioned variables based on the following
hypotheses:
H1: Transformational leadership will stimulate higher levels of safety climate compared to
transactional leadership
H2: Employees with a higher uncertainty avoidance will show a higher level of safety climate
compared to employees with a low uncertainty avoidance for transactional as well as
transformational leadership
H3: Safety climate will positively influence level of trust.
H4: Employee trust will have a positive effect on employee engagement.
Results showed that leadership did not have a significant influence on safety climate nor was
this effect moderated by uncertainty avoidance. However, uncertainty avoidance did
demonstrate a significant direct effect on safety climate. Furthermore, safety climate turned out
to be a significant predictor for employee trust. Subsequently employee trust was a significant
predictor for employee engagement and therefore mediated the relation between safety climate
and employee engagement.
In conclusion, supervisors should be aware of the high influence perceived level of safety has
on employee trust and subsequently on employee engagement. Focussing on making employees
feel safe seems to be highly beneficial when creating a committed workforce, even more so for
employees with high uncertainty avoidance.
Description
Citation
Supervisor
Faculty
Faculteit der Letteren