Development and Validation of the Informal Safety Leadership Measure

Abstract

This research develops and validates a measure of the emerging concept of informal safety leadership (ISL), which integrates elements of safety leadership and informal leadership to address a significant gap in organizational safety literature. Despite extensive research on formal safety leadership, there remains limited understanding of how non-managerial employees influence safety practices and culture within organizations. This dissertation develops and validates a comprehensive measure of informal safety leadership through a sequential mixed-methods approach incorporating a pilot study and two additional studies. First, a pilot study employed focus groups with health, safety, and environmental professionals to identify key dimensions of ISL. Study 1 focused on the development and refinement of a multi-dimensional ISL scale with data from 300 employees across high-risk industries. Exploratory factor analysis yielded a robust five-factor structure representing core ISL behaviors: Advocacy (proactive safety communication and initiatives), Support (responsiveness to others\u27 safety concerns), Reluctance (hesitancy to engage in safety leadership), Mindset (safety knowledge and priorities), and Reporting (promoting incident documentation and transparency). Study 2 confirmed this factor structure in a separate sample (N = 283) and established the scale\u27s convergent, discriminant, and criterion-related validity. The ISL measure revealed strong psychometric properties and predicted important safety outcomes including influence on others\u27 safety behaviors, vigilance, and compliance. Supplemental analyses revealed that ISL operates differently across organizational contexts, with medium-sized organizations showing the highest ISL scores, suggesting optimal conditions for informal safety leadership emergence. The findings contribute to both research and practice by providing a psychometrically sound instrument to measure informal safety leadership, enhancing our understanding of how safety culture develops through informal influence processes, and offering organizations practical insights for recognizing and leveraging informal safety leaders to reduce workplace injuries and fatalities