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Psychological Safety: The History, Renaissance, and Future of an Interpersonal Construct
Abstract
Psychological safety describes people’s perceptions of the consequences of taking interpersonal risks in a particular context such as a workplace. First explored by pioneering organizational scholars in the 1960s, psychological safety experienced a renaissance starting in the 1990s and continuing to the present. Organizational research has identified psychological safety as a critical factor in understanding phenomena such as voice, teamwork, team learning, and organizational learning. A growing body of conceptual and empirical work has focused on understanding the nature of psychological safety, identifying factors that contribute to it, and examining its implications for individuals, teams, and organizations. In this article, we review and integrate this literature and suggest directions for future research. We first briefly review the early history of psychological safety research and then examine contemporary research at the individual, group, and organizational levels of analysis. We assess what has been learned and discuss suggestions for future theoretical development and methodological approaches for organizational behavior research on this important interpersonal construct.
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“Previous research has identified psychological safety as a significant antecedent to employee voice behavior and error reporting in organizations (Appelbaum et al., 2016; Edmondson & Lei, 2014; O'Donovan & McAuliffe, 2020; Pfeiffer, Manser, & Wehner, 2010).”
From Psychological Safety as a Mediator of the Relationship Between Inclusive Leadership and Nurse Voice Behaviors and Error Reporting (2021) · cites this paper as Edmondson & Lei, 2014
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Metadata
- Authors
- Edmondson, A. C., & Lei, Z.
- Affiliations
- Harvard University (US)
- European School of Management and Technology (DE)
- Venue
- Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior
- Publisher
- Annual Reviews
- Published
- 2014-03-21
- Volume
- 1
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 23-43
- ISSN
- 2327-0608 (ISSN-L)
- 2327-0616
- OpenAlex
- W2116544216
- Semantic Scholar
- 39c1a2ff3ad746c8c9d4b630a60633ee2aeb4af2
- Cited by
- 2,577
- References
- 65
- Citations by year
- 2026: 481 · 2025: 463 · 2024: 290 · 2023: 271 · 2022: 286 · 2021: 248 · 2020: 214 · 2019: 123 · 2018: 67 · 2017: 58 · 2016: 48 · 2015: 22 · 2014: 2
- FWCI
- 7.72
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- Harvard Business School
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Team Dynamics and Performance
- Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management › Job Satisfaction and Organizational Behavior
- Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management › Organizational Learning and Leadership
- Keywords
- psychological safety, interpersonal risk, workplace safety climate, voice, teamwork, team learning, organizational learning, organizational behavior theory, future research directions
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