Effect of paternalistic leadership on safety performance of transit bus drivers: Activation effect of positive followership traits

Leadership is defined as the process of interaction between leaders and followers. Organizational context issues in leader-follower dyads have been widely explored in management studies. However, methods of applying said issues into the field of safety science require more attention. In the present study, the impact of paternalistic leadership on the safety performance of employees was investigated. Additionally, the mediating effects of autonomous safety motivation and activation effects of positive followership traits were discovered predicated on 456 leader-follower paired samples of Chinese transit bus drivers. From the findings of the present study, it was observed that paternalistic leadership yielded a direct positive impact on the safety performance of transit bus drivers (β = 0.761, p < 0.001). Furthermore, paternalistic leadership could enhance the safety performance of transit bus drivers by stimulating their autonomous safety motivations (95 %CI [0.0309, 0.1307]); positive followership traits could facilitate the effectiveness of paternalistic leadership. Specifically, positive followership traits could not only strengthen the influence of paternalistic leadership on employees’ autonomous safety motivation (β = 0.099, p < 0.01), but also moderate the mediating role of autonomous safety motivation between paternalistic leadership and safety performance (CI [0.0150, 0.1087]). In the present study, guidance and suggestions for companies to improve safety performance of employees are provided.