A study on materialism, workplace social courage and psychological safety

The primary aim of this study is to examine the effect of employees' perceptions of psychological safety on their workplace social courage behaviors, as well as to explore the moderating role of materialism in this relationship. Although the concept of courage has been extensively discussed in the literature, workplace social courage remains a relatively underexplored construct. Thus, this study first investigates the relationship between psychological safety and workplace social courage, proposing that higher levels of psychological safety will lead to greater displays of social courage at work. Furthermore, recognizing that employees' courageous behaviors are influenced not only by contextual factors but also by individual characteristics, the study examines whether materialism moderates this relationship. To test the study hypotheses, data were collected from 302 retail employees working in the sales sector in Turkey. The findings revealed that psychological safety had a positive and significant effect on workplace social courage. However, materialism did not have a moderating influence on this relationship.