Psychological Safety

Identifying factors associated with effective learning and teaching is of increasing importance for healthcare practitioners and researchers as a result of pressures to reduce costs and improve quality (Tucker and Edmondson, 2003). In healthcare environments characterized by avoidance to report errors and strong status differences, learning and teaching are not only the result of a dynamic social process characterized by knowledge sharing but also the result of a climate of psychological safety (cf. Edmondson 1999). That is, one key factor in facilitating the process of learning, organizational change, and engagement is psychological safety (Edmondson, 1999).

The concept of psychological safety was introduced fifty years ago as a critical

Detert and Burris, 2007). Proactive personality reflects a stable disposition toward engaging in proactive behaviors. Proactive individuals have a proclivity to take action and change their current situation and environment (c.f. Crant, 2000; Seibert, Crant, & Kraimer, 1999). Scholars suggest (c.f. Chan, 2006) that proactive individuals are less likely to perceive a situation as being psychologically unsafe even if contextual factors suggest otherwise. A recent meta-analysis confirmed that proactive personality was positively related to psychological safety (Fraizier, M., Fainshmidt, S., Klinger, R.L., Pezeshkan, A., & Vracheva, V.,

Interestingly, individuals with a learning orientation view errors as an important part of learning and self-development (c.f. Chiu, Leung, Kong, & Lee, 2011). Fraizier et al., (2017) further showed that interdependence - a reliance on each other to accomplish a task (Edmondson, 1999) - showed the strongest relationship with psychological safety, followed by role clarity, learning behavior, information sharing, and satisfaction. Group level analysis showed similar results. Moreover, moderator analysis showed that positive personality traits effects were stronger in high uncertainty avoidance (UA) cultures. Moreover, learning behavior effects were also stronger in high uncertainty avoidance cultures compared to low uncertainty avoidance cultures. Uncertainty avoidance is defined in the literature as the extent to which members of society are threatened by (i.e., high UA) or tolerate (i.e., low UA) uncertainty and ambiguity in the workplace (Hofstede, 1980; Fraizier et al.,