Cal State Fullerton Management Professor Rommel Salvador’s academic interests center on ethical decision making in organizations, occupational health and safety, and management education. The University of Central Florida doctoral alumnus’ research examines how ethical leadership and organizational climate influences behavior, exploring ways to improve safety training transfer and foster ethicality. In his role as department chair, Salvador actively bridges research and practice by applying scholarly insights into his administrative role.

The Importance of Ethics

“Leadership can have a cascading effect,” observes Salvador. “Ethical values and priorities often start at the top, but it is direct supervisors who make them tangible for employees. The way supervisors communicate, model behavior, and respond to situations can either reinforce or undermine the organization’s ethical standards.”

Salvador emphasizes that ethical decision making is not limited to high-profile dilemmas, but is woven into everyday organizational choices, from resource allocation to interpersonal interactions. He seeks to integrate this vision into the courses he teaches at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.

“I believe in teaching both the why and the how. Students need to understand the psychological and social dynamics behind ethical and safety-related behavior, and also learn tools for fostering the right climate in their future organizations,” he says.

Creating a Versatile Safety Culture in Organizations

Committed to building safer work environments, Salvador’s research on occupational health and safety emphasizes ensuring that safety training truly transfers to on-the-job behaviors, reducing accidents and fostering a culture where safety is part of the organizational identity. He has discovered that factors such as organizational climate and national culture can determine whether safety training leads to practical improvements in behavior.

“Safety isn’t just about training people, but is about making sure that training sticks. My work looks at how organizational climate, especially safety climate, influences whether employees apply what they’ve learned. Cultural context also matters; in some settings, risk tolerance or uncertainty avoidance can affect how safety measures are adopted,” he notes.

On the practical level, Salvador encourages leaders to actively support and model the behaviors training is designed to instill. Secondly, he encourages them to align incentives and performance measures with those behaviors. And finally, leaders should recognize the context, be it cultural, organizational or industry-specific, and the difference it can make.

“I want to see organizations where ethics and safety aren’t just compliance checkboxes, but are lived values. That requires commitment from leaders, well-designed systems, and ongoing reflection at every level,” he says.