The influence of a leader’s perceived preciseness on employee safety awareness and the role of cultural values.
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2021-01-29
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en
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Research shows that non-native employees with different cultural values are involved in, and can cause more industrial accidents. The current research intended to measure the effects of the perceived communication preciseness of leaders on the safety awareness of employees, in an attempt to reduce these industrial accidents caused by differences in cultural values. The effects were measured while comparing two countries: The Netherlands and Spain. The research question that was answered via an online survey was: ‘What is the effect of a leader’s perceived preciseness on the safety awareness of employees, and what is the role of uncertainty avoidance as a cultural value in this relation?’. The answer to this question could help to fill the research gap around work safety and communication styles, but could also help society to reduce the number of industrial accidents caused by differences in cultural values. In total, 133 respondents took part in the online survey, of which 77 were Dutch and 56 were Spanish.
The results show that a precise communication style was a significant predictor of safety awareness, regardless of nationality. Furthermore, uncertainty avoidance of employees moderated the relation between preciseness and safety awareness: this relation only existed under the condition of high uncertainty avoidance. Nationality was not a moderator. The results imply that managers in multinationals should take part in training that helps develop a precise communication style, which could especially be beneficial for employees with high uncertainty avoidance. Unfortunately, it was not possible to get one multinational organization to participate in the research, which led to respondents being from different companies. This could reduce the generalizability of the results to multinational organizations. Future research is needed to provide insights in how to reduce industrial accidents caused by differences in cultural values of employees.
Keywords: safety awareness, preciseness, communication style, uncertainty avoidance, multinationals
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