relationship between leader and follower (Glynn & DeJordy, 2010). Therefore understanding how leader-member interactions nurtured by transformational, respectively transactional, leadership influence team psychological safety is resourceful. Not only will it increase the current knowledge on the relationship between leadership and team psychological safety, but it will also be helpful for informing strategies aimed at enhancing leaders’ practices for fostering psychological safety.
Objective and research questions
Aim of the research
The aim of this research is understanding whether being transactional or transformational leader has a different effect on the psychological safety due to the quality of the leader-member exchanges entailed by each of these leadership approaches.
Research questions
Main research question
What is the relationship between transformational, respectively transactional, leadership LMX and psychological safety?
Sub-questions:
1) What is the relationship between on the one hand transformational, respectively transactional, leadership and psychological safety on the other hand?
2) What is the relationship between on the one hand transformational, respectively transactional, leadership and LMX on the other hand?
3) To what extent does LMX mediate the relationship between transformational/transactional leadership and psychological safety?
Concepts
Psychological safety
In this study’s context, psychological safety describes the perception that an individual has regarding the consequences of interpersonal risks in their working environment. In other words, it consists of beliefs on how other people will react when an individual exposes himself by asking questions, reporting an error, asking for feedback or making a proposal of a new idea (Edmondson, 2004). At individual level, psychological safety is associated with knowledge sharing, employee engagement, and employee voice (Edmonson & Lei, Psychological Safety: The History, Renaissance, and Future of an Interpersonal Construct, 2014). At group level, Edmonson (2004; 1999) argues that by facilitating error reporting, help seeking, and feedback seeking, psychological safety mediates team learning behaviours.
Transformational leadership
