Multilevel job demands and resources: Cross-level effects of competing organizational facet-specific climates on risky safety behaviors

Abstract

Both individual demands (i.e., workload) and organizational demands and resources (i.e., production pressure and safety climates) may affect the likelihood that employees undertake risky safety behaviors in different ways. Adopting an organizational multilevel perspective, the aim of the present research was fourfold: 1) to examine the impact of individual-level job demands (i.e., workload) on the enactment of risky safety behaviors; 2) to evaluate the effects of coexisting and competing organizational facet-specific climates (i.e., for safety and for production pressure) on the above outcome; 3) to assess their cross-level interactions with individual job demands, and 4) to test the interaction among such organizational demands and resources in shaping risky behaviors. A series of multilevel regression models tested on surveydata from 1375 employees nested within 33 organizations indicated that high workload increases the likelihood of employees enacting risky safety behaviors, while organizational safety and production pressure climates showed significant and opposite direct effects on this safety outcome. Moreover, organizational safety climate significantly mitigated the effect of individual job demands on risky safety behaviors, while organizational production pressure climate exacerbated this individual-level relationship. Finally, organizational safety climate mitigates the cross-level direct effect of organizational production pressure climate on the enactment of risky safety behaviors.