The antecedents and consequences of psychological safety in airline firms: Focusing on high-quality interpersonal relationships

Abstract

A comprehensive review of the literature on service creativity revealed the necessity to expand the line of creativity-based research in the service-driven industry. It also called for the creation of a survey instrument that entails high-quality interpersonal relationships, psychological safety, and learning from failures, by including two creativity-related constructs, namely, creative self-efficacy and employees’ creative work involvement to the model. The current study aimed; (a) to assess the validity and reliability of measurement models; and (b) to empirically examine the integrated proposed model consisting of salient constructs. A convenience sample of 341 airline employees responded to a self-report questionnaire that was developed using the steps of researchers’ in a comprehensive literature review and refined based on the feedback provided by a panel of five professionals who had worked in airline firms. The resultant data were subjected to exploratory factor analysis (EFA), confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), second-order CFA, and structural equation modeling (SEM) using version 23.0 of AMOS. The results showed that high-quality interpersonal relationships positively influenced psychological safety, which in turn, positively influenced learning from failures and creative self-efficacy. Further, learnings from failures positively influenced creative self-efficacy but not employees’ creative work involvement. Finally, both psychological safety and creative self-efficacy positively influenced employees’ creative work involvement. These findings have significant implications for human resource management practices that aim to promote the creative involvement of airline employees.