Leadership - Overlooked Piece of the Process Safety Management Puzzle ?

Leadership influence on process safety has been recognized as the important phenomenon. Various leadership approaches are studied to gain better insight into how leadership can enhance or hinders safety in industrial organizations. However, understanding is still in his early stages, therefore on the elementary level. Various types of leadership and their influence on safety are considered in this paper. Special attention is given to the authentic leadership, newly emerging leadership approach that is perhaps the most prominent among them. To better understand how authentic leadership could influence safety in process industry, a matrix was constructed that illustrates a relationship with a process safety management system. The example that shows how each of the authentic leadership factors can positively contribute to better process safety management system is presented.