Skills and Traits as Contributors to Senior Managerial Safety Commitment

Safety commitment is proposed to be the most important competence for senior managerial influence on organisational safety. In order to understand what contributes to safety commitment, this study investigates the Big-Five personality dimensions (extraversion, conscientiousness, agreeableness, openness to experience & emotional stability) and problem solving (understanding the problem and idea generation) as antecedents of senior managers’ safety commitment. Senior managers working in air traffic management (N=60) participated in interviews and completed questionnaires. Based on bootstrapped regressions, the findings indicate a positive effect of ‘understanding the problem’ but not ‘idea generation’ on safety commitment, as well as a positive relation between emotional stability and safety commitment. It is suggested that, based on these findings, selection criteria, guidance and best practice sharing for senior managers working in high reliability industries could focus on problem solving (specifically on understanding the problem) and personality in order to support them in their commitment to safety.
Keywords: senior managers, safety commitment, characteristics.