The Association of Leadership Styles with Psychosocial Safety Climate: The Case of Authentic Leadership

Psychosocial safety climate (PSC) is an organisation-level construct that measures an organisation’s commitment to the prevention of psychological harm in the workplace and has been identified as a lead indicator for psychological hazards. A key factor in PSC is senior leaders’ involvement through the establishment of policies, procedures, and practices for the prevention of psychological harm in the workplace. While leadership has been identified as an antecedent for a favourable PSC, the impact of different leadership styles on PSC has not been extensively studied. This article reports a multivariate study of five contemporary leadership styles and their impact on PSC. The study collected data through an anonymous online survey which included questions from the psychosocial safety climate questionnaire (PSC-12), multifactor leadership questionnaire (MFQ) 3rd edition, ethical leadership questionnaire (ELQ), and authentic leadership questionnaire (ALQ). Regression analysis was conducted to determine the leadership styles that significantly impact PSC. Passive avoidant leadership was negatively associated with PSC (r = -.280, p = .036), while authentic leadership had a statistically significant positive relationship with PSC (r = .41, p < .001). There is limited research on leadership and its impact on PSC. This study is the first to conduct a multivariate analysis to determine the leadership style that is more likely to bring about psychosocially safer workplaces, thus making an important contribution to the literature. The study also demonstrates that leadership styles found to impact other safety climate constructs, like safety climate and patient safety climate, cannot simply be transposed to PSC.