How to Mitigate the Negative Effect of Emotional Exhaustion among Healthcare Workers: The Role of Safety Climate and Compensation

The effect of toxic leadership on workplace deviance: the mediating effect of emotional exhaustion, and the moderating effect of organizational cynicism

BACKGROUND

Toxic leadership is abusive, destructive, and detrimental to nurses, can decrease nurse morale, increase stress levels, diminish organizational performance, and cause employee emotional exhaustion. Emotional exhaustion, a key component of burnout, has been linked to decreased job performance and increased likelihood of engaging in deviant behaviors at work. Organizational cynicism, as a negative attitude or distrust towards the organization and its leadership, may exacerbate the relationship between toxic leadership and workplace deviance. This study aims to explore how toxic leadership, workplace deviance, emotional exhaustion, and organizational cynicism are interrelated in the nursing profession.

METHOD

A multicenter descriptive, cross-sectional research design was conducted at three university hospitals affiliated with three Egyptian governorates: Zagazig, El-Fayoum, and Alexandria. Two hundred forty-three nurses completed the Personal and Job-related Data Questionnaire, Toxic Leadership Scale, Emotional Exhaustion Scale, Workplace Deviance Scale, and Organizational Cynicism Scale. Mediation analysis using SPSS PROCESS revealed that emotional exhaustion indirectly influences the relationship between toxic leadership and workplace deviance, while hierarchical multiple regression showed that organizational cynicism moderates this relationship, with linear regression confirming the predictive impact of these variables on workplace deviance.

RESULTS

Toxic leadership exhibits a substantial positive influence on workplace deviance (B = 16.132, p < 0.001), as does emotional exhaustion (B = 8.760, p < 0.001) and organizational cynicism (B = 5.376, p = 0.036). Furthermore, the interaction terms of toxic leadership, organizational cynicism, and emotional exhaustion are significant (B = -3.012, p = 0.036). The negative coefficient of the interaction term implies a mitigating impact, indicating that the combined presence of high toxic leadership, high emotional exhaustion, and high organizational cynicism may counterintuitively reduce workplace deviance (t = -2.110).

CONCLUSION

These results suggest that while toxic leadership, emotional exhaustion, and organizational cynicism each independently increase workplace deviance, their combined presence may unexpectedly reduce deviant behaviors.

IMPLICATION FOR NURSING

These results highlight the significance of tackling toxic leadership practices and cultivating a positive organizational culture to enhance a healthier work environment and reduce instances of workplace deviance. Healthcare settings should prioritize interventions to improve leadership practices, enhance employee well-being, and cultivate a supportive organizational climate.

Unraveling the Link between Perceived ESG and Psychological Well-Being: The Moderated Mediating Roles of Job Meaningfulness and Pay Satisfaction

Enhancing corporate accountability in areas such as environment, social, and governance (ESG) has solidified its role in the discussion on improving corporate resilience and growth. ESG management activities not only augment corporate sustainability and risk control but also influence the professional roles and personal lives of members through their perceived ESG. Historically, most ESG research has centered on the interrelation of corporate ESG endeavors and outcomes, while studies focusing on the influence of perceived ESG on members have been sparse. In this light, our investigation, rooted in the conservation of resources theory, aimed to delineate the mechanistic link between perceived ESG and members' psychological well-being. This study employed a stratified random sampling technique and collected data across three waves, each spaced four weeks apart. Our sample comprised 325 Korean employees working in administrative, technical, service, and sales roles. This study recruited 325 Korean employees across three time-lagged phases and found that ESG comprehension enhances job meaningfulness, subsequently amplifying psychological wellness. Intriguingly, as pay satisfaction escalates, the mediating role of job meaningfulness between perceived ESG and well-being intensifies. Our study underscores that for organizations to harness perceived ESG to boost psychological well-being via job meaningfulness, managing pay satisfaction is imperative. These findings highlight a crucial policy implication: policymakers must actively promote ESG awareness and incorporate it into employee compensation strategies. This integration is essential to cultivating a healthier, more engaged workforce and driving long-term organizational success.

How Fear of External Threats Plays Roles: An Examination of Supervisors' Trait Anger, Abusive Supervision, Subordinate Burnout and CCB

In times of uncertainty, such as during COVID-19, many organizations experience profit decline, and employees develop a fear of external threats, such as organizational layoffs. However, most of the literature focuses on how people's fear influences their well-being. Less is known about how employees' fear of external threats influences their workplace behaviors. The current study proposes that supervisors' fear of external threats stimulates those who are high in trait anger to behave in a more abusive way. Simultaneously, subordinates' fear of external threats would strengthen the positive relationship between abusive supervision and their burnout and compulsory citizenship behaviors (CCB), as fear of external threats constrains their response options to abusive supervision. We tested the hypotheses with a multiwave and multisource survey study (N = 322 dyads) in China, and the results showed that supervisors' fear of external threats strengthened the positive effect of trait anger on abusive supervision. Subordinates' fear of external threats strengthens the positive relationships of abusive supervision with CCB and the mediating effect of abusive supervision in the relationship of supervisors' trait anger with subordinates' CCB. Our study enriches people's understanding of how supervisors' and subordinates' fear of external threats may play roles in workplace behaviors.