Organizational safety climates are not solely enacted through policy documents but are operationalized in everyday interactions between leaders and employees, as well as through the implementation ...

The purpose of this study is to examine how the leadership competence of school leaders supports the implementation of psychosocial safety climate (PSC) within an educational workplace. While recent studies have considered how various leadership styles influence PSC, the processes through which school leaders at different levels enact and develop PSC in practice continue to receive limited attention. This study addresses this gap through a qualitative case study at a school in Aotearoa, New Zealand, which employed a sequential data collection process comprising 26 interviews and three focus groups. This investigation found that exemplary leadership, overcoming complexity, and multiskilled leadership are pivotal competencies that enable PSC implementation within a school setting. More broadly, we discuss how these key leadership competencies facilitate the development of policies, practices, and procedures that promote teachers’ psychological health and the four domains of the PSC framework. Finally, we propose a Leader Competence–PSC Framework as a practical tool for investigating and evaluating school leader competence across specific PSC domains.

Emerging research indicates that mātauranga Māori (Indigenous Māori knowledge and worldview) can meaningfully inform leadership practices and organisational decision-making, contributing to economic, social, and environmental outcomes. However, research investigating the potential link between organisations that integrate mātauranga Māori into their practices and employees’ perceptions of psychosocial safety climate (PSC) remains unexplored. This rich case study within an Aotearoa/New Zealand secondary school collected data from multiple sources to examine how mātauranga Māori shaped perceptions and the enactment of PSC. It found that mātauranga Māori has a reciprocal relationship with PSC and can act as a complementary framework by embedding tikanga (Māori cultural values) that enable relational trust, collective responsibility, and a holistic approach to psychological health and safety. This study’s contribution advances the PSC literature by demonstrating that Indigenous perspectives offer novel insights and cultural value in PSC development, reinforcing the importance of culturally responsive practices for employees’ well-being.