Making It Safe: The Effects of Leader Inclusiveness and Professional Status on Psychological Safety and Improvement Efforts in Health Care Teams

Item

Title

Making It Safe: The Effects of Leader Inclusiveness and Professional Status on Psychological Safety and Improvement Efforts in Health Care Teams

Abstract/Description

This paper introduces the construct of leader inclusiveness—words and deeds exhibited by leaders that invite and appreciate others' contributions. We propose that leader inclusiveness helps cross-disciplinary teams overcome the inhibiting effects of status differences, allowing members to collaborate in process improvement. The existence of a professional hierarchy in medicine and the differential status accorded to those in different disciplines is well established in the health care literature, as is the need for quality improvement. We build on this foundation to suggest that profession-derived status is positively associated with psychological safety (H1)—a key antecedent of speaking up and learning behavior—in health care teams. We hypothesize that this effect varies across teams (H2), and furthermore, that leader inclusiveness predicts psychological safety (H3) and moderates the relationship between status and psychological safety (H4). Finally, we suggest psychological safety predicts engagement in quality improvement work (H5) and mediates the relationship between leader inclusiveness and engagement (H6). Survey data collected in 23 neonatal intensive care units involved in quality improvement projects support our hypotheses. These results provide insight into antecedents of and strategies for fostering improvement efforts in health care and other sectors in which cross-disciplinary teams engage in collaborative learning to improve products or services. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Author/creator

Nembhard, Ingrid M.

Edmondson, Amy C.

Date

2006

In publication

Journal of Organizational Behavior

Volume

27

Issue

7

Pages

941-966

Resource type

en Research/Scholarly Media

Resource status/form

en Published Text

Scholarship genre

en Empirical

Language

en

Open access/full-text available

en Yes

Peer reviewed

en Yes

ISSN

1099-1379

DOI

10.1002/job.413

URL

Official Publisher's Webpage (Wiley Online Library)

Full-text PDF Shared by Author (ResearchGate)

Citation

Nembhard, I. M., & Edmondson, A. C. (2006). Making It Safe: The Effects of Leader Inclusiveness and Professional Status on Psychological Safety and Improvement Efforts in Health Care Teams. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 27(7), 941–966. https://doi.org/10.1002/job.413

Cited in

Cross-Sector Research on Continuous Learning and Improvement

Item sets

OB Citations - Cross-Sector Research on Learning and Improvement

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