Authentic leadership, psychological safety and whistleblowing : a mixed method approach

Abstract

The World Health organisation (2018) stresses the importance of a reporting environment within the healthcare sector to identify causes of errors, near misses or adverse events without fear of reprisal, having a non-punitive and blame free environment. Research has shown that authentic leadership and psychological safety play a critical role in speaking up behaviour as members of staff assess the behaviour of key leadership figures before deciding what action to take. The term whistleblowing is used synonymously with ‘raising of concerns’ or ‘speaking up’ as a definition to whistleblowing (Jones & Kelly, 2014). This research study tests whether there is a relationship between authentic leadership, psychological safety and speaking up. The research study takes a cross-sectional mixed method triangulation design. It assumes a positivist research paradigm supplemented by sequentially performing an exploratory qualitative study to give a more pragmatic research paradigm. Although the qualitative section is by no means complete, it has given a deeper perspective of what the results of the mediation model represents. The target population include the Paediatrics, Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Medicine, Cardiology and Orthopaedics departments. In total 666 invitation letters were distributed achieving a response rate of 26.6%. The research tool from the study was adapted from ‘The Speaking Up About Patient Safety’ version (Appendix A), from Schwappach et al, (2018). The findings from the study support the theoretical framework addressing the relationship between psychological safety, authentic leadership and speaking up. The study found that psychological safety does mediate the relationship between authentic leadership and speaking up; and the influence of authentic leadership and speaking up intentions are partially mediated by psychological safety. The type of response and engagement by management and supervisors may have a positive influence on attitudes towards reporting wrongdoing (Hsuan Lee et al, 2016) by creating an environment of psychological safety.