Impact of leadership styles on safety performance in risky workplaces: a meta-analysis
Abstract
Introduction: Leadership is a key factor in promoting safety performance (whereby organizations or employees strive to minimize workplace injuries and accidents). However, extant findings are controversial and lack a systematic quantitative review of the relationship between different leadership styles and safety performance and its boundary conditions.
Methods: The study constructed a meta-analytic theoretical framework covering 102 studies (107,109 participants) published before 2025 to interpret how the different impacts of leadership styles on safety performance.
Results: The results showed that 13 leadership styles were significantly positively associated with safety performance, and 4 were significantly negatively associated with safety performance. Relative weighted analyses revealed that transformational leadership had the most explainable contribution to safety performance. In addition, moderator analyses indicated that, in some cases, the impacts of leadership styles on safety performance were moderated by cultural factors, power factors, methodological factors, and risk factors.
Conclusion: This study advances the literature by being the first to concurrently integrate 21 distinct leadership styles into a single comparative framework and analyze their fluctuating effects across varying levels of occupational risk, highlighting the importance of different leadership styles in enhancing or inhibiting safety governance.
How strong is the evidence?
Evidence Hub reads this as a meta-analysis. Its evidence level is 1 of 5 (Highest · pooled evidence). Pooled evidence from several studies sits at the top of the evidence pyramid. Reported size: 107,109 participants or records.
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