The spiritual force of safety: effect of spiritual leadership on employees’ safety performance

Abstract

Objectives. Workplace safety problems are often catastrophic. There are both external and internal factors that influence employee safety performance. Strengthening internal factors is crucial to enhancing safety performance. Methods. Through a sense-making perspective, in the present study the impact of spiritual leadership on employees’ career callings and safety performance was investigated, along with the moderating function of future work self-salience. A total of 339 paired leader–employee data were obtained. Results. Spiritual leadership significantly improved employee safety performance. Career callings served a mediating role between spiritual leadership and employee safety performance. The moderating effect of future work self-salience was significant. When future work self-salience was high, the influence of career callings on employees’ safety performance was greater. Conclusion. The present results indicated that spiritual leadership sense-giving influences the development of employees’ career sense and improves employees’ safety performance in regard to spiritual motivation and pursuing career callings. In the present article, a theoretical and practical basis is provided for the safe development of organizations and society.

Keywords:

• spiritual leadership
• future work self-salience
• career calling
• safety performance
• sense-making

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Social Science Fund of China (20BGL136).