The dark and bright side of laissez-faire leadership: Does subordinates’ goal orientation make a difference?

Laissez-faire leadership is universally considered to be the most ineffective leadership style. However, a few recent studies revealed that laissez-faire leadership may have modest or even significant positive influence on subordinates’ work outcomes. To explain the inconsistent findings of laissez-faire leadership studies, the current study draws on stress theory and achievement goal theory to examine the boundary conditions and mechanisms underlying the impact of laissez-faire leadership on subordinates, cognitive appraisal and subsequent performance. Results from an experience sampling study of 68 supervisor-subordinate dyads that completed daily surveys over 10 consecutive work days indicated that: (1) when subordinates’ learning goal orientation is high, the relationship between laissez-faire leadership and hindrance appraisal will be positive; the indirect relationship between laissez-faire leadership and subordinates’ performance via subordinates’ hindrance appraisal will be negative; and (2) when subordinates’ performance-prove or performance-avoid goal orientation is high, the relationship between laissez-faire leadership and challenge appraisal will be positive; the indirect relationship between laissez-faire leadership and subordinates’ performance via subordinates’ challenge appraisal will be positive. This study found the double-edged sword effect of laissez-faire leadership at within-person level, which helps integrate inconsistent views in previous studies and explore the impact of laissez-faire leadership from a more nuanced and balanced perspective.

How to Prevent Hostile Behaviors and Emotional Exhaustion among Law Enforcement Professionals: The Negative Spiral of Role Conflict

The nature and characteristics of the current work environment of law enforcement professionals point out role-conflict situations as one of the main reasons leading to the occurrence of hostile behaviors and the worsening of employees' well-being. Precisely, this research analyzes the mediating role of role conflict between laissez-faire leadership and hostility or police professionals' emotional exhaustion. To mitigate the negative effects of role-conflict situations, the moderating role of certain personal resources such as self-efficacy, and organizational variables such as interactional justice, the meaning of the work and family-work enrichment is also analyzed. Structural equation modeling and multigroup analysis are used in a sample of 180 police professionals. The results show that role conflict fully and positively mediates the relationships between laissez-faire leadership and hostile behaviors or emotional exhaustion. Moreover, self-efficacy and interactional justice moderates the relationship between laissez-faire leadership and role conflict; the meaning of the work moderates the relationships between role conflict and hostile behaviors, and family-work enrichment moderates the relationship between role conflict and employees' emotional exhaustion. The huge relevance of the work of law enforcement professionals and its implications for society justify this research, which aims to highlight the importance of avoiding role-conflict situations to improve labor welfare and prevent counterproductive and unhealthy behaviors.

When Your Boss Is Under Pressure: On the Relationships Between Leadership Inconsistency, Leader and Follower Strain

It is widely acknowledged that leadership is crucial for follower health. Under stress, positive leader behaviors such as transformational leadership may decrease and the risk of negative behaviors such as abusive leadership may increase. Followers experience these discrepancies in leadership between routine and stressful periods as inconsistent. While positive and negative leadership is generally associated with follower strain, inconsistency may be stressful by itself, because it entails insecurity and unpredictability in the leader-follower relationship. We suggest that the level of perceived inconsistency and volatility in leaders' behavior across situations is an additional risk factor for follower health. Moreover, we expect perceived inconsistency to be stronger when leaders are strained. This survey study with N = 304 employees examines the relationships between leadership inconsistency and leader as well as follower strain from a followers' perspective. Participants rated their leaders' transformational and abusive leadership separately for routine and stressful conditions, their leaders' strain and their own strain. Employees who experienced stronger discrepancies in leadership between routine and stressful conditions, i.e., more inconsistency, experienced more strain. Moreover, from a followers' perspective, inconsistencies were stronger when leaders were strained. The findings provide evidence that leadership is less stable and consistent than generally assumed and that inconsistency is an additional risk factor. Leader strain may threaten the consistency of leadership and thereby negatively affect follower health.

Work environment risk factors causing day-to-day stress in occupational settings: a systematic review

Background

While chronic workplace stress is known to be associated with health-related outcomes like mental and cardiovascular diseases, research about day-to-day occupational stress is limited. This systematic review includes studies assessing stress exposures as work environment risk factors and stress outcomes, measured via self-perceived questionnaires and physiological stress detection. These measures needed to be assessed repeatedly or continuously via Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) or similar methods carried out in real-world work environments, to be included in this review. The objective was to identify work environment risk factors causing day-to-day stress.

Methods

The search strategies were applied in seven databases resulting in 11833 records after deduplication, of which 41 studies were included in a qualitative synthesis. Associations were evaluated by correlational analyses.

Results

The most commonly measured work environment risk factor was work intensity, while stress was most often framed as an affective response. Measures from these two dimensions were also most frequently correlated with each other and most of their correlation coefficients were statistically significant, making work intensity a major risk factor for day-to-day workplace stress.

Conclusions

This review reveals a diversity in methodological approaches in data collection and data analysis. More studies combining self-perceived stress exposures and outcomes with physiological measures are warranted.