Culture, Trust, and Psychological Safety

A recent study published in the International Business Review examines the relationship between organizational culture and psychological safety, focusing on the mechanisms that enable employees to speak up and take interpersonal risks.

Drawing on survey data from 2,451 employees across 18 societies, the authors argue that psychological safety — which they define as “the perception of being comfortable and employing oneself without fear of negative penalties to one’s image, status, or career” — is not a uniform byproduct of all culture types. Rather, psychological safety is shaped by the extent to which any given culture promotes trust within the organization, they explain.

Using the Competing Values Framework (CVF), the paper identifies several key findings regarding how psychological safety develops:

• The Primacy of Clan Culture: Organizations that emphasize a “clan” culture, characterized by collaboration, participation, and a concern for people, foster significantly higher psychological safety than “hierarchy” cultures, which rely on rigid control, formal rules, and centralized authority.
• Trust as the Mediator: The study reveals that the impact of organizational culture is mediated through trust in top management. Employees perceive the workplace as safe when they believe leadership will act in their best interest, reducing the perceived vulnerability of taking interpersonal risks.
• The Limits of Competition and Creativity: Notably, the research indicates that adhocracy (innovation-oriented) and market (results-oriented) cultures do not exert a significant direct effect on psychological safety. This suggests that an organizational emphasis on creativity or competition does not automatically ensure a safe environment for employees.

The authors further suggest that the efficacy of trust in leadership is contingent upon the broader macro-environment. The positive relationship between trust and psychological safety is amplified in societies with high governance quality and cultural values that prioritize ethical achievement and globally responsible innovation. For managers, these findings indicate that a culture program may produce varied results depending on the institutional and societal context in which employees are embedded.

To learn more about how leaders can cultivate a culture that enables — and even compels — employees to speak up, watch Psychological Safety at Work, a video discussion with Harvard Professor Amy Edmondson on the origins of Psychological Safety as a field of research, how it affects organizational success, and what leaders can do to cultivate it.