Linking Paradoxical Safety Leadership and Employee Safety Behaviors through the Lense of Affective Events Theory: a Moderated Mediation Model

Abstract

Paradoxical leadership has recently emerged as an important leadership style in organizational behavior. However, despite its growing importance, the role of paradoxical leadership in workplace health and safety largely remains unexplored. To fill this gap, the current study explores how paradoxical safety leadership affects employee safety behaviors via harmonious safety passion. Moreover, drawing upon affective events theory, the study unpacks the combined effects of harmonious safety passion safety internal locus of control on employee safety behaviors. Following the survey method, data were collected from 240 healthcare workers employed in diverse healthcare sectors across Pakistan. AMOS and SPSS were used to establish the reliability and validity of the collected data. The findings revealed that paradoxical safety leadership positively and significantly improves harmonious safety passion of healthcare workers which in turn leads to better safety behaviors i.e. prosocial and proactive safety behavior. The results also found moderating role of safety internal locus of control between harmonious safety passion and safety behaviors. This study offers valuable insights and practical implications for policymakers to guide policies and interventions aimed at fostering safety behaviors in healthcare sectors. Policymakers and healthcare providers should promote safety-oriented leadership style by empowering healthcare professionals to effectively navigate safety protocols and behaviors. These efforts will strengthen harmonious safety passion among employees enhancing overall safety
practices in healthcare settings. The study also addresses limitations along with future research directions.

Funding: “The presentation of this research at the ICBML Conference was supported by a travel grant from the Higher Education Commission (HEC) of Pakistan under the Grant No. 275254”.