A Multilevel Person-Centered Perspective on the Role of Job Demands and Resources for Employees' Job Engagement and Burnout Profiles

The present study examined the configurations, or profiles, taken by distinct global and specific facets of job engagement and burnout (by relying on a bifactor operationalization of these constructs) among a nationally representative sample of Canadian Defence employees (n = 13,088; nested within 65 work units). The present study also adopted a multilevel perspective to investigate the role of job demands (work overload and role ambiguity), as well as individual (psychological empowerment), workgroup (interpersonal justice), supervisor (transformational leadership), and organizational (organizational support) resources in the prediction of profile membership. Latent profile analyses revealed five profiles of employees: Burned-Out/Disengaged (7.13%), Burned-Out/Involved (12.13%), Engaged (18.14%), Engaged/Exhausted (15.50%), and Normative (47.10%). The highest turnover intentions were observed in the Burned-Out/Disengaged profile, and the lowest in the Engaged profile. Employees' perceptions of job demands and resources were also associated with profile membership across both levels, although the effects of psychological empowerment were more pronounced than the effects of job demands and resources related to the workgroup, supervisor, and organization. Individual-level effects were also more pronounced than effects occurring at the work unit level, where shared perceptions of work overload and organizational support proved to be the key shared drivers of profile membership.

Trust in leadership and perceptions of justice in fostering employee commitment

In a period of uncertainty, trust in leadership and perceptions of fairness have emerged as pivotal factors for fostering employee identification and affective commitment. Drawing from authentic leadership theory, this leadership style is identified as a crucial antecedent of affective commitment, examining the mediating role of distributive justice and the moderating role of interactional justice. A quantitative approach was employed, utilizing data from 302 questionnaires completed by Spanish retail workers. For data analysis, SPSS v.25 was used to generate descriptive statistics, while partial least squares structural equation modeling was applied to test the proposed hypotheses. Our findings revealed that authentic leadership is positively associated with the development of affective commitment, with distributive justice acting as a mediating factor between the two. Furthermore, interactional justice negatively moderates the relationship between distributive justice and affective commitment. Contrary to initial expectations, the second moderation, between authentic leadership and affective commitment, was not found to be significant. The research concludes by discussing the practical implications of the results.

Reviewing the influence of positive leadership on worker well-being: A comprehensive analysis

The study provides a review of existing empirical studies on the impact of positive leadership on worker well-being. The aim it to integrate current knowledge and provide directions for future research. The study analyses the content of 118 articles retrieved mainly from Google Scholar and Scopus database published between 2004 and 2022. Findings revealed that most of the studies are atheoretical with the dominant theory applied being conservation of resource theory. Furthermore, most of the studies were cross-sectionally designed, used convenient sampling and self-reported questionnaire. A conceptual framework is presented which synthesizes findings from prior works and shows the various dimensions of positive leadership practices and worker well-being. Additionally, a comprehensive future research agenda for theoretical and empirical advancement is suggested. The study offers a comprehensive framework that synthesizes and integrates the existing literature on positive leadership and worker well-being. The findings offer researchers in leadership a common platform for discourse.

Leaders' ambition and followers' cheating behavior: The role of performance pressure and leader identification

Purpose

We seek to understand why and how leaders' actions that are positive from organizational perspectives, drive to engage employees in cheating behaviors.

Design/methodology/approach

The proposed mediated moderation model was tested in two separate studies, study 1 and study 2, with data collected from police officers and employees of Islamic banking respectively, and then analyzed with Mplus for random coefficient models for direct effects, indirect effects, and for mediated moderation.

Findings

It was found that leaders' ambitions may enhance performance pressure on the subordinates, which in turn promotes their cheating behavior. Overall, we found that the traditional view of ambition theory only emphasizes good mechanisms such as motivation. However, to integrate with a social identity perspective, ambition would also cause pressure and pressure rather than motivation. Additionally, leaders' ambitions are more strongly and positively related to the performance pressure and cheating behaviors of employees when subordinates also have high leader identification. The findings of this research suggested that leaders' positive workplace behavior could also spawn subordinates' unethical behaviors.

Practical implications

Through this research, we can help policymakers understand that leaders' positive desire in general and ambition, in particular, may not be necessarily associated with subordinates' positive behaviors. Our results revealed that internalized with performance pressure, the leaders' ambition is associated with subordinates' cheating behavior. The findings of this research will help policymakers understand what might be promoting unethical behavior of employees. The cheating behavior of employees is not a singular level phenomenon of subordinates, it could also be triggered by contextual factors. Therefore, in developing policies for reducing the chance of cheating at work, the policymakers should also focus on the contextual factors that might be promoting cheating.

Originality/value

Ambitious leaders tend to demonstrate high performance, also, performance pressure literature focuses efforts of the employees toward high performance. The dark side of these lines of researches is still underexplored. We shifted the conventional focus of understanding to the positive side of ambition and performance pressure by explaining the potential cost in the form of employees' enhanced cheating behavior. The interplay between the relationship between leaders' ambition and subordinates' perception of leader identification also enhanced our understating about the boundary condition of the relationship between leaders' ambition, performance pressure, and cheating behavior of subordinates.

Impact of authentic leadership on employee turnover intention: Perceived supervisor support as mediator and organizational identification as moderator

Authentic leadership is considered a critical factor for retaining talented employees. However, despite fruitful findings, researchers have paid little attention to how authentic leadership is associated with employee turnover intention. Drawing on organizational support theory, justice literature, and social identity theory, we examine the effects of supervisors' authentic leadership on employee turnover intention to better understand how authentic leaders reduce employees' turnover intention in Asian context. In this study, we focus on the mediating role of perceived supervisor support (PSS) and the moderating role of organizational identification in the relationship between supervisors' authentic leadership and employee turnover intention. To test our hypothesized research model, we adopted a cross-sectional design with a convenience data sampling. We also used a self-report research design in the current study. We collected data from 433 employees from several organizations in Korea. Our respondents rated their immediate supervisors' authentic leadership and their PSS, turnover intention and organizational identification. Confirmatory factor analysis, regression analysis, and moderated mediation analysis revealed that: authentic leadership negatively predicted employee turnover intention. In addition, PSS completely mediates the relationship between authentic leadership and employee turnover intention. Furthermore, organizational identification moderates the relationship between PSS and turnover intention. Lastly, organizational identification moderates the mediating effect of PSS on the relationships between perceptions of authentic leadership and employee turnover intention. Herein, we discuss the managerial implications and future research directions arising from our study.

Using the Conceptual Framework for Examining Sport Teams to Understand Group Dynamics in Professional Soccer

(1) Background: The aim of this study is to propose a model of the interactions of group dynamics using the conceptual framework to examine sports teams; (2) Methods: The hypothesized model includes measures of group structure (authentic leadership, perceived justice, coaching competency, role clarity/ambiguity, and role conflict), group cohesion (cohesion and team conflict), and group processes (collective efficacy and transactive memory systems). Participants were 581 professional soccer players (M = 24.51, SD = 3.73; 356 males and 225 females) who completed a multisection questionnaire assessing group dynamics variables; (3) Results: The results show that coach leadership predicts coaching competency and perceived justice, and both competency and justice predict role ambiguity and role conflict. Furthermore, role ambiguity and role conflict predict group cohesion and team conflict, whereas group cohesion and team conflict both predict the transactive memory system. Finally, collective efficacy is predicted by the transactive memory system; (4) Conclusions: The results suggest the importance of coach behavior (leadership, justice, and competency) and group processes to improving team functioning in a professional sports context.

Linkages of organizational commitment and leadership styles: a systematic review

Purpose

This paper aims to examine how the linkages between organizational commitment (OC) and five leadership styles, namely, authentic leadership, benevolent leadership, ethical leadership, moral leadership and spiritual leadership, have been investigated in the literature.

Design/methodology/approach

This systematic literature review applies a matrix method to examine the significant literature in leadership and OC, specifically considering themes of self-development, self-awareness, self-regulation, self-discipline and self-motivation necessary for individuals and organizations. The papers from Australian Business Deans Council, Scopus and Web of Science listed journals were reviewed. Forty-three peer-reviewed English publications from 20 journals were selected and analysed.

Findings

The synthesis of these empirical studies revealed that the relationship between OC and these leadership styles had primarily been mostly quantitatively investigated in many countries and sectors. Additionally, ethical leadership remains the most commonly researched style. Furthermore, there are mediating mechanisms and boundary conditions in the relationship between these styles and OC.

Research limitations/implications

The literature search in this study was mainly focused on English articles only; therefore, some papers in other languages may not have been included. Additional qualitative studies based on these linkage themes need to be conducted in human resource development (HRD) contexts.

Practical implications

This review offers an overall picture of the existing knowledge of OC and leadership that will be fruitful for HRD practitioners to understand and replicate these concepts.

Originality/value

There are few systematic literature reviews on the relationship between OC and leadership styles. This paper is among the first systematic reviews to analyse how leadership has been associated with OC and provides potential research directions. HRD practitioners and academia should find the results of this study helpful.

Reconstructing authenticity through a multi-paradigmatic umbrella: A process perspective

While there is a substantive body of research that recognizes the importance of authentic leadership theory, critiques have challenged its dominant and positive-focused conceptualization. We synthesize these extant critiques, providing researchers with an integrative understanding of the theoretical, conceptual, and empirical deficiencies facing authenticity in a leadership context.

These deficiencies have thwarted authentic leadership’s development limiting our understanding of what authentic leadership is and who authentic leaders are. Synthesizing what has been said about authentic leadership demonstrates why authenticity needs to be conceived of and studied differently. We offer being-in-becoming as a multi-paradigmatic umbrella which accommodates different ontological foundations of what it means to be authentic. A being-in -becoming approach recognizes that authenticity emanates from a developmental process, suggesting the study of authenticity must also be thought of processually. Studying authenticity as a developmental process holds important theoretical and practical implications as it embraces the processual nature of our dynamic, evolutionary beings.

Ethics, corporate social responsibility and the role of human resource development: the academic experts’ view

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to get the perspectives of human resource development (HRD) scholars about connections among HRD, corporate social responsibility and ethics. The authors also sought to discover if HRD academic programs need to have ethics-related courses for their graduate students.

Design/methodology/approach

In this paper, the authors reviewed the literature and interviewed ten HRD scholars who substantially contributed to the field of HRD and have influential publications related to ethics or corporate social responsibility to find out the relationship between HRD, ethics and corporate social responsibility. A semi-structured interview method was adopted to collect data and purposeful sampling technique was used for analyzing data into identified themes.

Findings

The results from the interviews were categorized into seven different themes. While some scholars argued that ethics-related discussion needs to be integrated within every course, most scholars stated that ethics can be a required standalone course for HRD graduate programs.

Originality/value

Despite ongoing consideration of the ethical nature of HRD, little research has been conducted on how ethics and corporate social responsibility are represented in the field of study and practice. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first empirical paper in HRD that collected and analyzed experts’ perspectives in this topic.

The Emerging Paradigm of Leadership for Future: The Use of Authentic Leadership to Lead Innovation in VUCA Environment

This study explicated the mediating role of leader-member exchange (LMX) and identification with the leader linking authentic leadership and innovative work behavior. The data were collected from the three sectors of the service industry. The final sample size obtained was 347. The data were collected both through the Google form and pen-filled questionnaires. SPSS was used to compute demographic profiles and conduct a hierarchal regression, while Smart-PLS was used for evaluating the constructs for their psychometric properties and testing the structural relations as proposed in the model. This study found LMX and identification with the leader to mediate between authentic leadership and the innovative work behavior of the employees.

Job demands and perceived distance in leader-follower relationships: A study on emotional exhaustion among nurses

BACKGROUND

Emotional exhaustion is the most important component of burnout syndrome, which is a threat to nurses' psychological well-being.

OBJECTIVES

The study investigated the impact of job demands - workload, cognitive demands, emotional demands, role conflict - and perceived leader-follower interaction frequency on emotional exhaustion among nurses.

METHODS

This study was conducted at three hospitals in northern Italy through an anonymous self-report questionnaire administered to 560 nurses. Multiple hierarchical regression was performed.

RESULTS

Workload and role conflict were positively related to emotional exhaustion, whereas cognitive demands and perceived leader-follower interaction frequency were negatively related. Emotional demands displayed a non-significant relationship with emotional exhaustion. Further analyses were performed to comment on the unexpected outcome of cognitive demands. A critical role of the perception of "distance" in leader-follower relationships on burnout was found.

CONCLUSIONS

This study provides novel insights into the relationship between job demands and burnout, and much needed empirical evidence on leader-follower relationships among nurses, pointing to the important role played by leader distance in nurses' well-being at work. Findings highlight the importance of training head nurses in managing their working relationship distance from their followers in order to help them soothing emotional exhaustion.

Follower Mindfulness and Well-Being: The Mediating Role of Perceived Authentic Leadership and the Moderating Role of Leader Mindfulness

Drawing on implicit leadership theory and the mindfulness literature, we propose that perceived authentic leadership mediates the relationship between follower mindfulness and follower well-being. Leader mindfulness plays a moderating role in this process. We validated these hypotheses with the two-wave data from 56 leaders and 275 followers in two private enterprises located in China. We used Mplus 8.0 to test our hypotheses. Consistent with our hypotheses, the results showed that perceived authentic leadership mediated the positive relationship between follower mindfulness and follower well-being. Higher leader mindfulness enhanced the effect of follower mindfulness on perceived authentic leadership and also strengthened the indirect effect of follower mindfulness on follower well-being via perceived authentic leadership. The theoretical and managerial implications are further discussed in the light of these findings.

Authentic leadership and employee performance: mediating role of organizational commitment

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of authentic leadership (AL) on employee performance (EP) and to examine the mediating role of organizational commitment (OC).

Design/methodology/approach

Data were obtained from all employees (216) of tourism agencies in Guilan province (Iran) using a 19-item survey. In total, 173 questionnaires were returned, yielding a response rate of 80 percent. A mediation model was outlined and tested using structural equation modeling.

Findings

The results showed that AL had a significant effect on EP and OC. The findings further demonstrated the significance of the relationship between OC and EP confirming the mediating role of OC.

Practical implications

This study suggests that managers can promote OC and consequently EP by adopting an AL style. In addition, the managerial and theoretical foundations generated by this study can be considered a solution for improving EP.

Originality/value

This study contributes to the EP literature by providing a plausible explanation of the mediating role of OC in connecting AL to EP.

The Cross-Level Effect of Authentic Leadership on Teacher Emotional Exhaustion: The Chain Mediating Role of Structural and Psychological Empowerment

Although previous research has found that authentic leadership has a negative effect on employee burnout through structural empowerment, lack of psychological empowerment in the research cannot present a complete picture on how authentic leadership influences burnout because employees must experience being psychologically empowered for empowerment to be effective. Drawing on empowerment-related theories, this study integrates the three different perspectives of empowerment (authentic leadership, structural empowerment, and psychological empowerment) to examine their effects on emotional exhaustion, the core component of burnout, at multiple levels of analysis. Using a sample of 378 teachers from 59 primary and secondary schools in China, multilevel structural equation modelling results revealed that: (1) authentic leadership had an indirect effect on psychological empowerment partially through structural empowerment, (2) psychological empowerment played a full mediating role in the relationship between structural empowerment and emotional exhaustion, and (3) structural empowerment and psychological empowerment sequentially mediated the effect of authentic leadership on emotional exhaustion. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Distinguished Scholars Invited Essay: Becoming a Good Sport and a Better Performer: A Social Information Processing View of Authentic Leadership

Drawing on social information processing theory, this study investigates the mechanisms by which authentic leadership affects subordinate task performance through subordinate attitudes and behavior. Sportsmanship, conceptualized as a behavioral indicator of employee positivity and persistence in pursuing high performance, is argued to be a potentially important outcome for authentic leadership. Data collected from 203 matched subordinate–supervisor dyads in six organizations from six diverse industries were subjected to contrast analysis with bootstrapping. The results suggest that the indirect effect of authentic leadership on subordinate sportsmanship is mainly via a cognitive process, as opposed to an affective one. Furthermore, it is the employee’s sportsmanship that transmits the effects of authentic leadership on employee task performance. Implications and future directions are discussed.

How, Why, and When High-Involvement Work Systems Are Related to OCB: A Multilevel Examination of the Mediating Role of POS and of the Moderating Role of Organizational Structures

Drawing on signaling and social exchange theories, we proposed and tested a multilevel model of antecedents of organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). More specifically, this article examines how, why, and when high-involvement work systems (HIWS) are related to employee and team citizenship behaviors. Using a sample of 568 respondents in 46 teams, our results indicate that HIWS are directly and indirectly related to team-level OCB through the team perceived organizational support (POS) climate. Structure was found to act as a significant internal contextual factor. More specifically, we found that decentralization and formalization foster the positive link between HIWS and POS, while the indirect relationship between HIWS and team-level OCB through POS was weaker when the degree of formalization was low, and stronger when this structure element was high. Finally, consistent with Ehrhart and Naumann’s group norms theory of OCB, team-level OCB was positively related to employee OCB, regardless of whether task interdependence is high or low. This study contributes to the understanding of processes and contextual conditions through which teams and employee citizenship behavior are related to HIWS.

A Comparison of ML, WLSMV, and Bayesian Methods for Multilevel Structural Equation Models in Small Samples: A Simulation Study

Multilevel structural equation models are increasingly applied in psychological research. With increasing model complexity, estimation becomes computationally demanding, and small sample sizes pose further challenges on estimation methods relying on asymptotic theory. Recent developments of Bayesian estimation techniques may help to overcome the shortcomings of classical estimation techniques. The use of potentially inaccurate prior information may, however, have detrimental effects, especially in small samples. The present Monte Carlo simulation study compares the statistical performance of classical estimation techniques with Bayesian estimation using different prior specifications for a two-level SEM with either continuous or ordinal indicators. Using two software programs (Mplus and Stan), differential effects of between- and within-level sample sizes on estimation accuracy were investigated. Moreover, it was tested to which extent inaccurate priors may have detrimental effects on parameter estimates in categorical indicator models. For continuous indicators, Bayesian estimation did not show performance advantages over ML. For categorical indicators, Bayesian estimation outperformed WLSMV solely in case of strongly informative accurate priors. Weakly informative inaccurate priors did not deteriorate performance of the Bayesian approach, while strong informative inaccurate priors led to severely biased estimates even with large sample sizes. With diffuse priors, Stan yielded better results than Mplus in terms of parameter estimates.