Friends in need: The protective effect of social relationships under low-safety climate

Previous studies have explored the role of social relationships, mainly with the supervisor, in promoting a high organizational safety climate. Not much is known, however, about the effect of social relationships when the safety climate is low. This study explored whether high-quality social relationships could compensate for a low level of safety climate. Hypotheses were tested among 673 employees and 46 managers from 46 departments in 11 manufacturing organizations in Israel. Results of both partial least squares and mixed-model procedures showed that employees' climate perceptions mediate the relationship of supervisors' climate perceptions with employees' safety behavior. In addition, employees' climate perceptions interacted with the quality of relationships with colleagues to affect safety behavior. However, the quality of the relationship with supervisors did not moderate the relationship between supervisors' and employees' climate perceptions. The results suggest that high-quality social relationships with colleagues could buffer the effects of low-level safety climate.