Perceived Organizational Justice, Leadership Styles And Psychological Safety Among Healthcare Workers In Benue State: Mediating Role Of Team Tenure

Abstract

This study examined perceived organisational justice, leadership styles, and psychological safety among healthcare workers in Benue state: mediating role of team tenure. A cross-sectional survey design was employed, involving 360 participants, of whom 114 (31.7%) were male and 246 (68.3%) were female, with ages ranging from 19 to 70 years (M = 35.92, SD = 10.74). Data were gathered using the Psychological Safety Scale, the Organisational Justice Scale, the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire and The Team Tenure Questionnaire. Statistical analyses were conducted using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) version 25, incorporating Multiple Linear Regression, and Hayes’ PROCESS Macro for simple mediation analysis. Five hypotheses were stated and their results showed that, organisational justice significantly predicted psychological safety among healthcare workers, with interactional justice, procedural justice and distributive justice emerging as significant contributors. Leadership styles jointly influenced psychological safety with transformational leadership having the strongest positive effect, followed by supportive leadership and transactional leadership. However, mediation results revealed that team tenure did not significantly mediate the relationship between organisational justice and psychological safety, nor the relationship between leadership styles and psychological safety. The study therefore recommended that, the Nigerian Ministry of Health both Federal and State should implement continuous leadership development programmes in healthcare institutions that focus on inclusive leadership skills such as empathy, integrity, communication, and responsiveness to enhance psychological safety, among others.