Safety Leadership in Complex Environments: achieving theory - method consistency through a Critical Realist approach

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Abstract: Research on leadership has evolved from static leader-centric toward moreprocessual and context-based models. Complex environments reinforce the need of thisevolution and result in the emergence of a new conceptualization: the complexity leadershipthat considers leadership as a dynamic, contingent and interactive process. Studying complexityleadership requires new methods allowing to better understand the role of leaders in handlingnon-linear, dynamic and interactive phenomena. Traditional epistemological paradigms failedto capture the underlying mechanisms of complex dynamics. Critical Realism offers aninteresting epistemological framework to achieve theory-method consistency for understandingleadership as a process in complex environments. Based on a specific example of complexityleadership – safety leadership, this paper proposes an integrated multi-level conceptualframework that allows to reconceptualize the role of leadership as a process in complexenvironments.

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