Examining the impact of ethical leadership on safety and task performance : a safety-critical context

Purpose: Aiming at understanding the effectiveness of leadership styles on workers' outcomes in safety-critical context, this study explores the impact of ethical leadership on safety and task performance under contingent effects of two safety-critical factors (i.e. perceived accident likelihood and perceived hazard exposure). Design/methodology/approach: The study is cross-sectional in nature and survey questionnaire was used for data collection. Data were collected from 397 workers from ten organizations producing chemical products. Multiple hierarchical regression was performed to test the hypothesized relationships. Findings: Results show that ethical leadership has positive association with workers' safety performance, safety attitude and task performance. Further, perceived accident likelihood moderated the influence of ethical leadership on workers' safety performance and attitude in such a way the association is strong when accident likelihood is high. Perceived hazard exposure moderated the link between ethical leadership and task performance such that higher hazard exposure decreases the effectiveness of ethical leadership. Practical implications: Findings imply that managers can optimize employee safety for jobs associated with high safety-critical context through demonstration of ethical leadership behaviors. The study suggests that ethical leadership can prove to be important tool to improve workers' occupational safety well-being, which in turn helps them to improve their health and general well-being. Originality/value: Contextualization of ethical leadership in safety-critical context is novelty of the study.