The role of organizational trust and organizational silence in safe behavior: A study in aviation Industry

In the aviation industry, which is among the safety-critical sectors, the safe behaviors exhibited by employees play a vital role both in ensuring operational safety and in reducing risks related to human factors. The aim of this research is to examine the relationship between the safe behaviors of aviation sector employees and organizational trust and organizational silence, and to evaluate the mediating role of organizational silence in this relationship. In this context, the effects of these variables on safe behavior were analyzed by considering the sub-dimensions of organizational trust, namely trust in the manager and trust in the organization, and the sub-dimensions of organizational silence, namely acquiescent passive silence, opportunistic silence and silence for the benefit of the organization. The sample of the research consists of a total of 392 employees working in the aviation sector in Turkey. In the analysis of the data, descriptive statistics, as well as t-test for independent samples, one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), correlation analysis and Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) techniques were used. Statistical analysis processes were carried out using SPSS 27, AMOS 22 and Jamovi 2.6.26 software. The findings have shown that organizational trust has a significant and positive effect on safe behavior. As employees' trust in their managers and organizations increases, their tendency to exhibit safe behavior also increases. Although the effect of organizational silence variables on safe behavior is limited, a negative and nearly significant relationship has been determined, especially between opportunistic silence and safe behavior. The structural equation model findings show that organizational silence types play a partial mediating role in the relationship between organizational trust and safe behavior. As a result, the study findings reveal that organizational trust is a decisive factor in encouraging safe behaviors in safety-critical sectors such as aviation; and organizational silence types are among the important psychosocial dynamics that can affect this relationship.