Voicing for safety in the workplace: A proactive goal-regulation perspective

© 2020 Elsevier Ltd Safety voice refers to proactive communication actions that aim to improve safety by identifying current limitations and possibilities to create a safer workplace. This entails individuals to identify hazards and dangerous ways of working in advance, and provide constructive...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Curcuruto, M., Strauss, K., Axtell, C., Griffin, Mark
Format: Journal Article
Published: 2020
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/80491
Description
Summary:© 2020 Elsevier Ltd Safety voice refers to proactive communication actions that aim to improve safety by identifying current limitations and possibilities to create a safer workplace. This entails individuals to identify hazards and dangerous ways of working in advance, and provide constructive suggestions to generate a positive change. Drawing on goal regulation literature, we aim to investigate safety voice as a part of a dual safety-specific proactivity process: a goal generation phase characterised by mental simulation and anticipation of risks (namely ‘safety envisioning’), and a goal striving stage which involves acting aimed at enhancing safety (here represented by ‘safety voice’). Study 1a provides support to the distinction between these two phases in a large sample of laboratory supervisors (N = 233). Study 1b showed the predictive validity of safety envisioning on safety voice (N = 71 managers). Study 2 evidenced the effects of organizational antecedents (perceived job control; supervisor and coworker support) on goal safety envisioning in a large sample of chemical workers from Central Europe (N = 157). Our paper adds an emergent stream of research by applying a goal-regulatory perspective in occupational safety.