With a little help from my friends: the positive contribution of teamwork to safety behaviour in public hospitals

ABSTRACT

Against the backdrop of decreased organizational slack in public sector organizations, we investigate the direct and indirect effect of teams on safety behaviour in an Italian acute care hospital. Quantitative and qualitative findings confirm the positive contribution of teams to individuals’ safety behaviour. The study contributes to the limited empirical research on safety behaviour in high-reliability settings as part of a wider conversation about public sector professionals under crisis. The findings can assist managers of public sector hospitals to facilitate conditions for effective team communication in the interest of patient safety, and can, conceivably, be extended to other public sector high-reliability settings.

KEYWORDS:

• Safety behaviour
• teamwork
• positive organizational behaviour
• psychological capital
• hospitals

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to the IRSPM 2019 conference attendees, particularly Stephen Teo, for their feedback on an earlier version of this paper. We also owe gratitude to our respondents, anonymous reviewers, and guest editors.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The effect of three exogenous (demographic) variables (age, gender and position) was examined in the study. To do this, a multi-group analysis was conducted for each of these exogenous variables, which in all cases revealed no significant differences in the level of fit of the model between the different age, gender and position groups examined. This provided sufficient evidence to suggest that age, gender and position had no effect on the hypotheses tested in the study.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Elisabetta Trinchero

Elisabetta Trinchero, PhD, is Associate Professor of Practice at Government, Health and Not for Profit Department and CERGAS at SDA Bocconi School of Management.

Georgios Kominis

Georgios Kominis, PhD, is lecturer (Assistant Professor) in management control at the University of Glasgow Adam Smith Business School.

Adina Dudau

Adina Dudau, PhD, is senior lecturer (Associate Professor) in management at the University of Glasgow Adam Smith Business School.

Roxana Corduneanu

Roxana Corduneanu is a doctoral researcher in management at the University of Glasgow Adam Smith Business School.