There has not been much consensus on the causality of safety climates in the past 25 years. Moreover, there is an overall lack of models specifying the relationship among safety leadership, safety climate and safety performance. On the grounds of social system theory, this study has investigated the potential correlation among them. Self-administered questionnaires that included a safety leadership scale, a safety climate scale and a safety performance scale were used to collect data in four universities in central Taiwan. The survey was conducted among 754 subjects selected via simple random sampling. The number of returned valid questionnaires was 465, and the response rate was 61.67%. Path analysis showed that safety climate partially mediated the relationship between safety leadership and safety performance. Canonical correlation analysis showed that safety controlling, one factor of safety leadership, had main influence on CEOs and managers' safety commitment and action in safety climate, and on safety organization and management, safety equipment and measures, and accident investigations in safety performance. The results of the statistical analysis indicated that organizational leaders would do well to develop a strategy by which they improve the safety climates within their organizations, which will then have a positive effect on safety performance. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.