Team Conscientiousness, Team Safety Climate, and Individual Safety Performance: a Cross-Level Mediation Model

Responding to calls for studies to examine the cross-level influence of team personality composition, we hypothesized a cross-level mediation model of the effects of different operationalizations of team conscientiousness (i.e., mean, minimum, maximum, and variance) on individual safety performance through team safety climate. We tested our model using a three-wave longitudinal design with a sample of 451 employees and 70 supervisors nested within 70 teams from two branches of one hospital. The results of our multilevel path analyses indicated that the mean, minimum, and variance—but not maximum—operationalizations of team conscientiousness at time 1 were significantly related to team safety climate at time 2. Further, team conscientiousness (i.e., mean, minimum, and variance) at time 1 exerted a top-down influence on both self-ratings and supervisor ratings of individual safety compliance and safety participation at time 3 through team safety climate at time 2, suggesting that team personality composition can influence outcomes at different levels of analyses. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.