Psychological safety and psychosocial safety climate in workplace: A bibliometric analysis and systematic review towards a research agenda

Abstract

Introduction: Research on workplace safety has seen significant growth in academic and industry-focused literature over the past 20 years. However, the extant literature on workplace safety tends to focus on safety outcomes of physical accidents and injuries while relegating its conceptual and theoretical development to the background. Psychological safety and psychosocial safety climate in the workplace are essential to workers' health and safety. These concepts are crucial in enabling job satisfaction, work engagement, and performance productivity. Progressing the literature on this subject is necessary to keep abreast with the changing dynamics of the post-COVID challenges, such as working from home, isolation, and stress from AI, among others. A significant gap in the extant literature burrows in the lack of conceptual clarity of workplace safety from a psychological perspective and the poor understanding of its substantive effects on organizations. Hence, re-examining workplace safety's conceptual and theoretical foundations from a psychological lens offers a more nuanced understanding of its potential to contribute to employee well-being and organizational resilience, pursuing a better work-life safe and more comfortable working environment.

Method: This study: (a) synthesizes the theoretical propositions and empirical findings from 990 research articles published between 2000 and 2023 to map the existing body of knowledge about psychological safety and psychosocial safety climate, including their theoretical underpinnings and mechanisms, to offer a state-of-the-art overview of the scope of workplace occupational health and safety research from a psychological perspective; (b) applied a data-based research design adhering to PRISMA; (c) compiled descriptive synthesis and textual narrative syntheses through bibliometric analysis and a systematic literature review; and (d) opens the black box of workplace safety research by presenting significant findings to inform future conceptual, theoretical, and methodological research as well as the practice of workplace safety through the lens of psychology.

Results: This study's findings further offer managerial implications to workplace safety policy-making and human resource management practices to enhance employees' psychological safety and eliminate workplace psychosocial hazards.

Keywords: Bibliometric analysis; Psychological safety; Psychosocial safety climate; Systematic review.