Previous research suggests that safety behavior is an important antecedent of workplace safety that can be influenced by coworkers within the employee's network. Drawing on the social network perspective, both advice and trust network structures (centrality and density) are proposed to influence resource exchanges among employees and thus impact their safety behaviors. The objective of the current study is to examine the extent to which: 1) advice-giving (indegree centrality) and advice-taking (outdegree centrality) impact safety behavior, 2) cognitive and affective trustworthiness (indegree centrality) and trust in coworkers (outdegree centrality) are related to advice-giving and advice-taking behaviors which in turn are expected to be related to safety behavior, and 3) advice network density relates to safety behavior. Four hundred sixteen nurses in 42 workgroups and their respective supervisors from a hospital in China each completed a survey. Data were analyzed using social network analysis and hierarchical linear modeling. Advice-giving was positively associated with safety behavior and this relationship was stronger when corresponding group members reported more advice-giving and advice-taking behaviors within the group. Further, cognitive and affective trustworthiness were positively related to advice-giving and subsequent safety behavior; whereas cognitive trust in coworkers was positively related to advice-taking. Both cognitive and affective trust in coworkers were not related to safety behavior. These findings highlight the relevance of the advice social network to safety behavior revealing in part the value of measuring social network variables to understanding workplace safety.
