- This article discusses safety climate including relevant research that provides scholarly as well as practical implications.
- Authentic leadership is also discussed, including safety-related challenges and solutions and the impact on safety climate.
- The authors discuss how this research reveals a strong relationship between safety climate and authentic leadership behaviors.
Research has shown that organizational leadership affects safety climate, safety culture and safety outcomes (Cooper & Phillips, 2004; Dirik & Intepeler, 2017; Gerganoff, 2019; Leemann, 2002). However, there is limited data that can be used to examine the relationship between authentic leadership and occupational safety climate, which the authors believed would exist. The findings of the present study support this hypothesis and provide safety professionals and organizational decision-makers support to invest resources into leadership development programs. To better understand these concepts, the authors provide an overview of literature that examines safety climate (Denison, 1996; Kines et al., 2011) and authentic leadership (Bass, 2008; Kuchinka, 2020). The authors then discuss the present study and what was learned, the conclusions drawn and recommendations for safety practitioners.
