Civil Engineering July 2022 | Vol 30 No 6

18 July 2022 Civil Engineering T he purpose of the research was to explore the relationship between transformational leadership, supportive organisational context, and its impact on psychological safety in the setting of a project management firm. The research study revealed that employees’ psychological needs and emotions were particularly evident in project management organisations during workplace changes caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. Because of the pandemic and its impacts, many individuals have been hesitant to communicate their deepest ideas and opinions for fear of jeopardising their job stability, self-image, or profes- sional standing. Due to the unpredictability and complexity associated with the Covid-19 pandemic, it is critical for business leaders in project management firms to become more flexible. Thus, organisational deci- sions and managerial actions have been cited as one of the solutions towards the improvement of psychological safety in organisations. How transformational leadership and supportive organisational context relates to psychological safety in the private sector was previously unknown, particularly in the project management profession. Quantitative data was gath- ered, and the statistical analysis focused on instrument and construct validation, correlations, regressions and inferential statistics. A random sample was drawn from the sample frame and 60 partici- pants were sampled. The study revealed statistically sig- nificant positive correlations between the three variables, namely transformational leadership, supportive organisational con- text and psychological safety. The regres- sion analysis revealed transformational leadership and supportive organisational context predicts about 15% (R square = 0.15, p <0.1) of the variance in psycho- logical safety – a statistically significant contribution. This implies that human resource practitioners and organisational development specialists can improve psychological safety by improving trans- formational leadership and supportive organisational context. Implications for managers include implementing a set of structural elements in the organisation that give context support, such as enough resources and knowledge, as well as team leader behav- iours like coaching and direction setting. The study was restricted to a specific organisational environment, and the findings may therefore not be generalised across all industries. The adoption of a cross-sectional design had certain drawbacks in that it limited the ability to determine causal links among the research variables. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The research report was presented to the University of South Africa’s Graduate School of Business Leadership by Owethu Sisilana in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree, Master’s Degree in Business Leadership.  Owethu Sisilana Pr CPM Construction Project Manager Development Bank of Southern Africa owethus@dbsa.org Transformational leadership, supportive organisational context and psychological safety in a project management organisation New research has revealed that improving transformational leadership and supportive organisational context has a significant role to play in creating psychological safety in project management organisations.