Examining the dual role of authoritarian leadership in new hires’ safety situation awareness and behavior during and after safety training: a mixed-methods study

This study investigates the dynamic relationships among safety training, safety situation awareness (SSA), safety behavior, and authoritarian leadership (AL) in new hires through a mixed-methods approach (a time-lagged field survey, a scenario-based experiment, and a multi-wave replication). To resolve theoretical conflation in the safety literature, we decouple social learning theory (SLT) and social exchange theory. Identifying SSA as the primary cognitive mechanism, we demonstrate that training functions purely as an SLT-driven catalyst to build cognitive capacity. Furthermore, we demonstrate how AL shapes the enactment of SSA by influencing trust and reciprocity norms under social exchange mechanisms. We reveal its differential moderating role: while AL may generate a baseline of externally enforced compliance, it weakens the autonomous enactment of compliance driven by SSA, and simultaneously inhibits voluntary and proactive safety participation. Our findings resolve the AL paradox by conceptualizing its phase-dependent effectiveness as a theoretically grounded interpretation supported by the observed moderation pattern, where the driver of safety behavior shifts from functional cognitive learning during initial socialization to dysfunctional social exchange during active duty.