The Mediating Role of Psychological Safety in the Relationship Between the Group Norms and Occupational Stress for Engineers in the Information and Communication Industry

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between the structural characteristics (intensity of a norm, range of tolerable behavior and potential return difference) of the group norms regarding improvement proposals, psychological safety and occupational stress among engineers working in the information and communication industry. A survey by the web-based method was conducted with 602 Japanese employees (601 valid responses). Therefore, a 2-1-1 multilevel mediation analysis using a hierarchical linear model was calculated to confirm that psychological safety could be a mediator of the correlation between structural characteristics (intensity of a norm, range of tolerable behavior and potential return difference) and occupational stress, the data hierarchy of each job type was recognized by calculating ICC. The results showed that psychological safety had a mediating role in the relationship of intensity and potential return difference of the norm and stress responses.