Transformational Leadership During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Strengthening Employee Engagement Through Internal Communication

COVID-19 Research in Communication Journals: A Structural Topic Modeling-Assisted Bibliometric Analysis

This article presents a bibliometric analysis of research on COVID-19 health communication. We reviewed and analyzed 1,851 articles published in 170 peer-reviewed communication journals between January 2020 and November 2022, to identify key bibliometric information and major research topics in this rapidly expanding field of research. The distribution of countries indicates that the United States is the most productive country, and researchers from Spain, China and the United Kingdom also play an important role. Health Communication is the most influential journal in terms of research productivity and impact. The analysis of highly cited references demonstrates the interdisciplinary nature of this research field. The topics generated by structural topic modeling show that scholars have responded to a variety of issues in COVID-19 communication, encompassing different levels of health communication, the effects of information dissemination, the impact on the general public as well as vulnerable populations, health preventive behaviors and communication technologies. This study aims to enhance researchers' understanding of the current state of this research field and provide insights for future studies.

Top-level leaders and implementation strategies to support organizational diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) interventions: a qualitative study of top-level DEIB leaders in healthcare organizations

BACKGROUND

The Black Lives Matter movement and COVID-19 pandemic motivated the wide-scale adoption of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) initiatives within healthcare organizations and the creation of DEIB top-level leader positions. The next step is to understand how these leaders contribute to the implementation of DEIB interventions, a task with notable salience due to not only the historical difficulties associated with DEIB strategy execution, but also the substantial evidence that leadership plays a significant role in implementation processes. Therefore, the objective of this qualitative study is to understand the role of top-level DEIB leaders in the implementation of healthcare organizational DEIB interventions.

METHODS

A qualitative research approach which used an in-depth semi-structured interview approach was employed. We conducted thirty-one 60-90-min semi-structured interviews with DEIB top-level leaders between February 2022 and October 2022 over Zoom. An iterative coding process was used to identify the key implementation strategies and activities of DEIB top-level leaders.

RESULTS

Interviewees were mostly Black, majority female, and mostly heterosexual and had a variety of educational backgrounds. We identified the DEIB top-level leader as the DEIB strategy implementation champion. These leaders drive five DEIB implementation strategies: (1) People, (2) Health Equity, (3) Monitoring and Feedback, (4) Operational Planning and Communication, and (5) External Partners. Within these, we identified 19 significant activities that describe the unique implementation strategies supported by the DEIB top-level leaders.

CONCLUSIONS

To move toward sustained commitment to DEIB, the organization must focus on not only establishing DEIB interventions, but on their successful implementation. Our findings help explicate the implementation activities that drive the DEIB initiatives of healthcare organizations and the role of DEIB leaders. Our work can help healthcare organizations systematically identify how to support the success of DEIB organizational interventions.

The impact of leadership styles on employee safety behaviour among Chinese healthcare workers: The moderating role of cooperation facilitation

With the support of social exchange theory and social impact theory, this study aimed to examine the impact of transactional and transformational leadership on safety behaviour with the moderating role of cooperation facilitation in Chinese healthcare workers. This study used a simple random sampling method and data were collected from healthcare workers in Zhenjiang city, Jiangsu province, China. A total of 376 questionnaires were utilised and partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) technique was used for data analysis. The result showed that transactional and transformational leadership positively impact safety behaviour of health care workers. The findings also indicated that cooperation facilitation positively moderates the relationship between transactional and transformational leadership on safety behaviour. This study provides an insightful contribution that leadership must encourage the workers to cooperate in safety-related activities to make the work environment healthier and safer. Lastly, this study also discussed some theoretical and practical implications for researchers and policymakers.

Transformational Leadership, Employee Engagement, Job Satisfaction, and Psychological Well-Being among Hotel Employees after the Height of the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Serial Mediation Model

Over the past few years, great attention has been given to the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and its consequences on employee psychological well-being (PWB), particularly in the hospitality industry. Like many aspects of human life, employee PWB is influenced by multiple factors. One of the factors that may affect employee PWB is transformational leadership (TLS). Accordingly, we aim through this study to empirically (1) examine the direct effect of transformational leadership on employee PWB and (2) investigate the potential independent and serial mediation effects of employee engagement (EEG) and job satisfaction (JS) on the TLS-PWB relationship after the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Data were gathered using an online questionnaire from a convenience sample of 403 front-line employees from five-star hotels in Saudi Arabia. The partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) with the bootstrapping technique was utilized to test the study hypotheses. Based on the demands-resources (JD-R) theory, the findings of this study reveal a significant positive effect of TLS on hotel employees' PWB. Additionally, drawing on the stimulus-organism-response (S-O-R) model, the two main contributions of this study are: (1) EEG and JS serially and independently have a significant partial mediational effect on the TLS-PWB relationship among hotel employees, and (2) EEG has a greater impact on the TLS-PWB relationship as an intervening variable than the two other mediators (JS, as well as EEG and JS serially). Based on these findings, hotel management should mainly consider developing and encouraging TLS behavior among their managers to promote EEG and increase JS among their followers, which consequently enhances their PWB and alleviates negative psychological outcomes due to experiencing a disaster such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

Predictors of Post-Traumatic Growth in a Sample of United Kingdom Mental and Community Healthcare Workers during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Experiences of adversity can generate positive psychological effects alongside negative impacts. Little research to date has evaluated predictors of post-traumatic growth in mental or community healthcare workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Following a survey of 854 community and mental healthcare staff in the United Kingdom in July to September 2020, multiple linear regression was used to determine the association between hypothesised risk and protective factors (personal, organisational and environmental variables) and total scores on the Post-traumatic Growth Inventory-Short Version. Positive self-reflection activities, black and minority ethnic status, developing new healthcare knowledge and skills, connecting with friends and family, feeling supported by senior management, feeling supported by the UK people, and anxiety about the personal and work-related consequences of COVID-19 each significantly independently predicted greater post-traumatic growth. Working in a clinical role and in mental healthcare or community physical healthcare predicted lower post-traumatic growth. Our research supports the value of taking an organisational growth-focused approach to occupational health during times of adversity, by supporting staff to embrace opportunities for personal growth. Valuing staff's cultural and religious identity and encouraging self-reflective activities, such as mindfulness and meditation, may help to promote post-traumatic growth.

The Role of Grit in Organizational Performance During a Pandemic

In the context of the organizational crisis caused by COVID-19, scholars and professionals have focused on factors that help employees stay at their jobs and perform well. In an uncertain era, grit is a significant employee and organizational sustainability trait. Using 890 responses, this study determined how grit affects organizational performance and used contingencies including supportive climate and transformational leadership as moderators. The hypotheses were tested by examining the relationship between grit and organizational performance and the moderating effects of supportive climate and transformational leadership. Further, these hypotheses were supported by confirmatory factor analysis, PROCESS macro analysis, and bootstrapping. Grit was found to be positively associated with organizational performance; meanwhile, supportive climate and transformational leadership strengthen the relationship between grit and performance. Both theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed. This study makes a theoretical contribution through its assessment of the impact of grit on organizational performance. Trait activation theory can explain how grit can be expressed through organizational climate and leadership. With regard to practice, grit can be used as a vital factor for personnel selection and a supportive climate should be provided to ensure a desirable organizational climate.

The Online Adapted Transformational Leadership and Workforce Innovation within the Software Development Industry

Leadership and workforce innovation are the two most glazed over universal phenomenon across time within the management literature. Despite the status of the buzz words, few researchers studied if there is a link between the online leadership behaviors and the de(in)creasing innovativeness of the followers at work. The current research aimed for offering a viable solution for the online-adapted leadership–workforce innovation equation, by answering to the following research question: is online transformative leadership able, and if so, are its instruments sufficient for increasing followers’ organizational and personal innovativeness within an exclusively online work environment? Research used a two-tailed questionnaire as a research instrument and applied it within the IT&C Industry in Iasi, Romania, namely the software development branch. Results were gathered during the first months of the social lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic; therefore, the ongoing communication and online work procedures implementation were captured via the subjects’ responses. Data was analyzed by using SemPLS (v3.2.5.) software; results show that transformational leadership instruments, once shifted within an exclusively online working environment, suffer from losing in importance and designated effects. Research provides information in regards to four general hypotheses that prove to be partially supported, sending the reader to the idea that an exclusively online-adapted work environment does not show expected results in terms on transformational leadership, nor workforce innovation. Therefore, online-based transformational leadership instruments need to be reshaped and adapted so that followers correctly perceive their leaders’ actions and behaviors on all the five dimensionalities.