How instrumental and emotional co-worker support coevolve through time with psychological safety

The aim of this study is to investigate how two types of co-worker support and psychological safety evolve over time in relation to each other. Drawing on Conservation of Resources (COR) Theory we hypothesize reciprocal relationships between instrumental and emotional co-worker support and also between both types of co-worker support and psychological safety. We set up a three-wave longitudinal design within 727 employees of a large financial organization, and adopt a latent change score approach (LCS) to investigate within-person change-related reciprocal relations. Our results revealed that specifically emotional co-worker support is associated with an increase in psychological safety over the next month. Instrumental support surprisingly was associated with a subsequent decrease in psychological safety. Psychological safety was not associated with a subsequent change in experienced support. Contrary to our hypothesis, we found that high emotional support was associated with a subsequent decrease in experienced instrumental support. This longitudinal study revealed several unexpected significant findings, which indicates that the longitudinal relationships between social support and psychological safety are complex. While this study adds to the understanding of how supportive behaviour of co-workers can actually be helpful in fostering psychological safety, it also offers several intriguing avenues for future research.