Accidents happen: Psychological empowerment as a moderator of accident involvement and its outcomes


Erdogan B., Ozyılmaz A., Bauer T., Emre O.

PERSONNEL PSYCHOLOGY, cilt.71, sa.1, ss.67-83, 2018 (SSCI) identifier identifier

  • Yayın Türü: Makale / Tam Makale
  • Cilt numarası: 71 Sayı: 1
  • Basım Tarihi: 2018
  • Doi Numarası: 10.1111/peps.12228
  • Dergi Adı: PERSONNEL PSYCHOLOGY
  • Derginin Tarandığı İndeksler: Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), Scopus
  • Sayfa Sayıları: ss.67-83
  • Karadeniz Teknik Üniversitesi Adresli: Hayır

Özet

Research in the occupational safety realm has tended to develop and test models aimed at predicting accident involvement in the workplace, with studies treating accident involvement as the starting point and examining its outcomes being more rare. In this study, we examine the relationship between accident involvement and a series of outcomes drawing upon a learned helplessness theory perspective. Specifically, we predicted that psychological empowerment would moderate the relationship between prior accident involvement and outcomes. We tested our hypotheses on a sample of 392 employees and their 66 supervisors working in an iron and steel manufacturing firm in Southern Turkey, using data collected from employees and their supervisors via four separate surveys. Results suggest that accident involvement was positively related to supervisor-rated employee withdrawal, production deviance, and sabotage only when psychological empowerment was low. The results illustrate that workplace accidents have indirect costs in the form of higher withdrawal and maladaptive behaviors, and organizations may inoculate employees against some of these outcomes via higher psychological empowerment.