Safety leadership: A bibliometric literature review and future research directions
Zhou Jiang, Xianbo Zhao, Zhongmin Wang, Kendall Herbert
Abstract
The field of safety leadership, despite significant growth, remains fragmented. This paper aims to consolidate this field by conducting a bibliometric review of 2,098 articles and 86,495 secondary documents to provide a comprehensive view of safety leadership research. Co-citation analyses revealed three foundational knowledge clusters: leader roles in safety climates and systems; mechanisms of leadership influence on safety outcomes; and the theoretical/empirical foundations for safety leadership. Additionally, bibliographic coupling analyses spotlight five emerging frontiers: leadership practices and safety climates; enabling safety performance and behaviors; holistic and contextualized perspectives informing safety leadership; multilevel lenses of leading safety climate/culture; and active, social, and transformative elements of safety leadership. We synthesize these findings to propose a future research agenda aimed at fostering both theoretical and empirical advancements of safety leadership research.