Empowering Leadership in the United Arab Emirates Nuclear Sector: Effects on Safety Climate, Safety Monitoring and Safety Behaviours

Abstract

Accidents continue to happen despite efforts to make the nuclear industry's workplace safer. The nuclear sector should be concerned about the innate habits that lead to mishaps. Thus, this study aims to critically assess how employee perception of empowering leadership, safety climate, and safety monitoring affect safety behaviours at a nuclear power plant (NPP) in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). It intends to look at the moderating effects of safety monitoring on the relationship between safety climate and safety behaviours and the mediating effects of safety climate and safety monitoring on the relationship between empowering leadership and safety behaviours. The current study aims to clarify any potential relations between the variables in the research model by integrating the Theory of Planned Behaviour, Social Exchange Theory, and Self-Regulation Framework. A total of 387 Barakah NPP employees, or a response rate of 77.4%, who operate in high-risk operations and are particularly susceptible to occupational accidents, participated in the study. AMOS-SEM structural equation modelling was used in the study to examine the data and test the hypotheses. According to the statistical findings, empowering leadership positively influences safety behaviour, safety climates and safety monitoring therefore resulted in higher levels of safety behaviour. The findings revealed that safety climate and safety monitoring partially mediate the link between v empowering leadership and safe behaviour. It was also shown that safety monitoring served as the partial moderation between safety climate and safety behaviour. This study advances the body of knowledge on empowering leadership, safety climate, safety monitoring, and safe behaviours. Research on the relationship between empowering leadership and safety behaviours in an NPP is expanded in this study because there is limited literature on these relationships. It further depicts the dual functions of safety monitoring: (1) mediating the relationship between empowering leadership and safety behaviour, and (2) moderating the relationship between safety climate and safety behaviour. Therefore, this research enables NPPs in other countries to integrate empowering leadership to improve safety monitoring, ensure a better safety climate, and promote employee safety behaviours. Keywords Empowering leadership, Safety climate, Safety monitoring, Safety behaviours, Nuclear power plant, United Arab Emirates