Role modeling of safety-leadership behaviors in the construction industry: A two-wave longitudinal study.

Background: The construction industry is heavily affected by occupational accidents, and it is important to investigate how leadership behaviors promoting safety on construction sites are fostered among construction-site managers.

Objective: The overall aim of this study was to investigate how safety-leadership behaviors can be developed in the construction industry, specifically focusing on managerial role modeling.

Methods: A two-wave longitudinal cohort study with approximately four months between measurement occasions was conducted among construction-site supervisors in Sweden (n = 51). Supervisors' ratings of their site managers' and their own generic and safety-specific contingent reward (CR) leadership behaviors were obtained by means of questionnaires. Cross-lagged panel models were tested within a path model framework to test the hypothesis that site managers' leadership behaviors prospectively influence supervisors' leadership behaviors.

Results: Site managers' CR behaviors prospectively influenced supervisors' CR behaviors, both generic CR behaviors (β= 0.29, p = 0.01) and safety-specific CR behaviors (β= 0.22, p = 0.04). For safety-specific CR behaviors, a reversed effect (β= 0.26, p = 0.03) was also found, implying that supervisors' behaviors prospectively influenced site managers' behaviors.

Conclusion: Site managers act as role models for supervisors when it comes to developing safety-leadership behaviors on construction sites. The results also indicate that site managers are influenced by their subordinate supervisors' safety-leadership behaviors. Hence, there seems to be reciprocal interaction between site managers and supervisors in which they influence each other and together shape safety-leadership practices at their construction sites.