Safety citizenship behaviour of miners in Ghana: The effect of hardiness personality disposition and psychological safety

Safety citizenship behaviour (SCB) is believed to be an important prevention behaviour against workplace incidents in today's high-risk industries. This paper seeks to investigate antecedents of two distinct dimensions of SCB (affiliation-oriented and change-oriented) among miners/employees. The objectives of the study are in threefold: (a) to explore the effect of resilient dispositional hardiness traits on psychological safety; (b) to examine the effect of psychological safety on safety citizenship behaviours; and (c) to examine the mediating role of psychological safety on the relationship between hardy traits and safety citizenship behaviour. Survey collected from a sample of 316 respondents drawn from six large-scale gold mining companies in Ghana found that, psychological safety has a positive and significant influence on display of SCB among employees. Specifically, hardiness component of commitment, control and challenge were associated with psychological safety, significantly. The result showed that psychological safety mediated the relationship between commitment and control and SCB dimensions which are affiliation-oriented (safety stewardship) and change-oriented (employee safety voice). However, there is no supporting evidence for a mediation of psychological safety for the relationship between challenge hardiness trait and SCB. The findings have important implications for research and practice. In particular, it demonstrates the usefulness of psychological safety and SCB, and its role for developing current and future safety needs of organisations such as the mining companies. It sheds light on the differential effects of hardiness traits, and offers a more nuanced interplay between resilient disposition and SCB.