رهبری پدرسالارانه و ارتباطات ایمنی خدمه کابین : انگیزه رفتار صوتی  Paternalistic leadership and cabin crews’ upward safety communication: The motivation of voice behavior

1. Introduction Cabin crew members play an essential role in the development of the airline industry. Their top priority duty is to guard cabin security and ensure the execution of safety regulations. However, limited research has examined cabin crews’ proactive safety related organizational behavior, such as upward safety communication between flight attendants and cabin crew department managers. Previous research regarding cabin crew’s communication related topics mostly focused on in-flight communication among aircrew members (e.g. Brown and Rantz, 2010; Chute and Wiener, 1996; Murphy, 2001). Despite the importance of crew resource management between cockpit and cabin crews, flight attendants’ willingness to conduct upward safety communication to the department managers may provide valuable and irreplaceable observations from the front-line working experience, benefiting greatly on organizations’ overall performance. Hofmann and Morgeson (1999) propose that upward safety communication is negatively related to adverse safety events. As being the liaison among cockpit, cabin and ground while at work, communication has long been. recognized essential to fight attendants’ performance. Smith et al. (1978) argue that open communication and frequent interactions between employees and managers are important factors that can lower accident rates. Meanwhile, researchers reveal that communication significantly helps employees’ physical safety level of the work site and safety performances (Kines et al., 2010). It is thus expected that the more cabin crew members are willing to conduct such communication as a proactive safety behavior, the better the interactions and the understanding between flight attendants and cabin crew department managers, which may lead to better safety performance. Voice behavior is regarded an extra-role organizational citizenship behavior, which can be defined as “non-required behavior that emphasizes expression of constructive challenges with an intent to improve rather than merely criticize” (Van Dyne and LePine, 1998, p. 109). Nowhere is the need for voice more crucial than in sets of interdependent individuals who share responsibility for work outcomes (Sundstrom et al., 1990), such as cabin crew members. In the present paper, voice behavior is viewed as safety citizenship behavior, which presents in communicating upward, particularly on safety related topics, from cabin crew to the department managers. Being the frontline operators, flight attendants constantly obtain first-hand information from theirinteractions with passengers and other crew members (Chen and Chen, 2014). The special characteristics of cabin duties, such as being a liaison among diverse groups of people, offer flight attendants exclusive opportunities to experience the practice of airlines safety policies and collect the feedback directly from various channels. Performing voice behavior demonstrates that flight attendants take proactive steps to participate in airlines safety practice. It is thus worth working to identify possible factors which affect such behaviors, and further trying to enhance the positive effects and avoid the negative ones.