Country differences in the relationship between leadership and employee engagement: A meta-analysis

Influence of destructive leadership behaviors on the meaning of work and work productivity

This study aimed to determine the influence of destructive leadership behaviors on employees' meaning of work and work productivity, using a longitudinal research design. Local government organizations in a municipality in Sweden were invited to participate in the study. Self-rated questionnaire data on employees' meaning of work and work productivity was collected at four time points over a period of 18 months, and 582 employees responded to the questionnaire on one or more occasions. A 4-item Destructive Leadership Scale (DLS) was developed and used at the first time point to assess the destructive leadership behaviors of incoherent planning, assigning unnecessary tasks, ambiguous expectations, and autocratic behavior. Latent growth models were used to analyze the influence of destructive leadership on the change in employees' meaning of work and work productivity over the 18-month period. The results show that destructive leadership has a significant negative influence on employees' meaning of work (β = -0.44, p = 0.02) and work productivity (β = -0.46, p = 0.04). The effect sizes were greater than those identified in previous cross-sectional studies, indicating that the effects of destructive leadership may accumulate and become more important over time. Important destructive leadership behaviors include incoherent planning, assigning unnecessary tasks, ambiguous expectations, and autocratic behavior. These behaviors have a significant negative effect on employees' meaning of work and work productivity. Proactive assessment of destructive leadership behaviors is warranted to improve future selection and training of managers.

The effect of team cultural tightness and transformational leadership on employee creative behavior: A cross-level moderated mediation model

In recent years, "cultural tightness-looseness" refers to the strength of social norms and tolerance for deviant behaviors perceived by individuals in society, and team cultural tightness applied at the organizational level represents the strength of team norms. According to the cultural tightness-looseness theory, this study explores the influence of team cultural tightness on employee creative behavior, as well as the moderating role of transformational leadership and the mediating role of work engagement. A questionnaire method was used to survey five enterprise organizations in China through three stages, and 288 paired questionnaires were finally obtained from leaders and employees. The results found that team cultural tightness has a significant negative effect on employee creative behavior through the mediating effect of work engagement. In other words, the more the team culture in the workplace tends to be loose, the more it stimulates employee work engagement, which in turn promotes employee creative behavior. In addition, transformational leadership played a significant positive moderating role in the model. Under the influence of transformational leadership style, the negative impact of team cultural tightness on employee work engagement and creative behavior can be mitigated. The study enriches the understanding of the influence and action mechanism of the cultural tightness-looseness theory on employee creative behavior. In future research, the action mechanism of team cultural tightness interacting with different leadership styles to influence employee creative behavior will be explored more deeply.

The spillover effect of after-hours electronic communication on nurses' cyberloafing: the mediating role of psychological contract breach

BACKGROUND

Considerable research has investigated the influencing factors of cyberloafing in the workplace. However, few studies have focused on the antecedents in non-work fields, especially for nurses. According to the effort-reward imbalance theory, this study aims to explore the spillover effect of after-hours electronic communication on nurses' cyberloafing, and the mediating role of psychological contract breach.

METHODS

A total of 282 nurses completed the online survey. PROCESS macro for SPSS was used to test how after-hour electronic communication affect nurses' cyberloafing.

RESULTS

After-hours electronic communication has a significant positive impact on nurses' cyberloafing, and psychological contract breach plays a mediating role in the relationship.

CONCLUSION

Psychological contract breach was the linchpin linking after-hours electronic communication to nurses' cyberloafing in workplace. This study provides a guide for healthcare organizations to reduce or manage inappropriate telework arrangements and strengthen nurses' psychological contracts.

Transformational leadership and work engagement in public organizations: promotion focus and public service motivation, how and when the effect occurs

Purpose

The purpose of the present study is twofold. First, the authors examine the potential mediating role of promotion focus in terms of the relationship between transformational leadership and work engagement. Second, the authors set out to examine whether the indirect effect of transformational leadership and follower work engagement through promotion focus is stronger when followers' public service motivations are higher versus lower.

Design/methodology/approach

The present study examines the association between transformational leadership behavior and employees' work engagement. Data included measures of transformational leadership behavior and promotion focus as well as public service motivation and work engagement. Utilizing a field sample of 316 employees, the study tested the proposed relationships with robust data analytic techniques. Results were consistent with the hypothesized theoretical framework, in that promotion focus mediated the relationship between transformational leadership behavior and work engagement stronger when public service motivation was high and weaker when public service motivation was low. Based on the findings, the study concludes that the connection between transformational leadership behavior and work engagements partially mediated by promotion focus and this mediated connection is stronger when employees' public service motivation is high and weak when employees' public service motivation is low—thereby yielding a pattern of moderated mediation.

Findings

The study findings suggest five main conclusions. First, consistent with previous studies (Aryee et al., 2012; Bui et al., 2017; Hetland et al., 2018; Li et al., 2021; Ng, 2017; Tims et al., 2011; Zhu et al., 2009), the study found a positive relationship between transformational leadership and employees' work engagement. Second, along the same lines of previous research (Brockner and Higgins, 2001; Hetland et al., 2018; Johnson et al., 2017; Kark et al., 2018; Tung, 2016), this study found a positive association between transformational leadership and employees' promotion focus. Third, as hypnotized, the study found a positive association between employees' promotion focus and their work engagement. Fourth, as hypothesized using regulatory focus theory, promotion focus positively mediates the relationship between transformational leadership and employees' work engagement. This result elucidates the underlying mechanism that enables leadership to influence employees' work engagement, particularly, through the self-regulatory promotion focus. The result demonstrates that leadership relates to and affects basic motivations of the promotion systems, which have been known as a basic human need for development and growth. The study demonstrates that leaders may be able to promote followers' motivations by provoking a promotion focus frame and this motivational frame further shapes followers' outcomes in terms of employees' work engagement. Hence, this finding support previous research claiming that promotion focus acts as a mediating mechanism in the relationship between transformational leadership and various outcomes(e.g. Johnson et al., 2017; Kark et al., 2018). However, this study adds significantly to existing research by being the first study to empirically test and pay attention to the promotion focus frame as the underlying psychological mechanism through which transformational leaders motivate followers to higher levels of work engagement. Finally, consistent with the study hypothesis, public service motivation has a moderating effect on the promotion focus-work engagement association. In addition, as the study hypothesized, public service motivation has a moderating effect on the mediating relationships between transformational leadership and employees' work engagement through promotion focus in public sector organizations. It appears that the relationship between transformational leadership and followers' work engagement through promotion focus is enhanced by the role of employees' PSM. In other words, the employees' public service motivation increases employee engagement further for employees with high situational promotion focus than for employees with a low situational promotion focus, which could be explained by the fact that more public service motivation is more meaningful to followers with promotion focus motivational framework to be more engaged. That is, public servants who are predisposed to respond to motives grounded primarily or exclusively in public institutions and organizations are more engaged at work due to their self-regulatory promotion focus spirit. This result is in congruence with findings that indicate that PSM is an important driver of organizational performance and has a positive impact on organizational behavior (Ritz et al., 2016). This finding does provide support to Bakker's (2015) proposition that PSM may strengthen the positive relationship between personal resources (e.g. optimism and self-efficacy) and work engagement because public servants with high levels of enduring PSM find their work important and meaningful. Therefore, they are likely to invest their resources in public service work, be engaged in their work and perform well.

Research limitations/implications

First, it examines the extent to which transformational leadership contributes to employee work engagement. That is, the current study adds to the literature by using promotion focus attributes to probe the underlying mechanism through which transformational leaders enhance employee engagement in the workplace (Kark and van Dijk, 2019). Second, by combining insights obtained from the literature on the self-regulatory theory (Higgins, 1997) and the PSM theory (Perry and Wise, 1990), this study adds to work engagement literature by showing the importance of PSM as an institutional factor in work engagement. Lastly, the study expands the transformational leadership literature by using a moderated mediating model that recognizes PSM as a situational variable in the mediating relationship between transformational leadership and employee engagement.

Practical implications

The results have several implications for practice. Findings reveal that transformational leaders can enhance follower work engagement by inducing their promotion focus orientation. Managers can, therefore, display more transformational behaviors, such as providing a compelling vision, communicating high expectations, promoting new ideas and giving personal attention to each employee in the workplace. In addition, managers may develop a promotion-focus orientation among their followers by appealing more to their ideals and aspirations than to their duties and responsibilities (Brockner and Higgins, 2001). Organizations, on the other hand, could offer leadership training and development programs designed to enhance transformational leadership Behaviors. As for employees' PSM, public organizations have to be more creative in attracting, selecting and retaining employees with high levels of public service motives (Kim, 2021). Public organizations can also train their employees on public service values and enhance their incentives structures to align their motivational predispositions with the organization mission and values.

Originality/value

The present study adds to the existing theory in two ways. First, despite significant progress in exploring the process and boundary conditions for transformational leadership with beneficial work behaviors, the study findings paid attention to the underlying psychological mechanism, precisely the self-regulatory promotion focus frame through which transformational leaders motivate followers to higher levels of work engagement. A second theoretical contribution of the present study is that it adds to the long line of research supporting a more concerted effort to understand both the moderating and mediating mechanisms that link transformational leadership to follower outcomes. By using the moderated mediating model, this study shows that transformational leaders can induce a promotion focus within followers who have developed a public service motivation profile to be more willing to engage in their organizations. The current study also has several practical implications that can be drawn from the study findings. First, organizations should become more sensitive to their employees' (promotional and preventive) self-regulatory foci. Managers should be trained to be strategically oriented toward people's growth and development. Second, by serving as role models, managers can shape their subordinates' regulatory foci. The more managers' actions suggest that they are focused on promotion, the more likely it is that their subordinates will follow suit. Third, managers may emphasize the use of positive feedback, such as praise, by giving it when employees succeed and withholding it when they fail. This feedback style is more likely to elicit a promotion focus, especially if the praise for success focuses on what the employee was able to accomplish (e.g. “You aided in the advancement of an important task!”) rather than negative occurrences that the employee was able to avoid (e.g. “You were extremely cautious and as a result, you avoided making the wrong judgment.”) (Brockner and Higgins, 2001). Moreover, the moderating role of public service motivation in the effects of transformational leadership on work engagement through a promotion focus mechanism suggests that managers should not assume all employees would engage in their work similarly to their transformational leadership behaviors. Managers may find that followers who have values that are consistent with public service are more inclined to their promotion focus frame and thus are likely to internalize both motivations, which ultimately leads to more work engagement. As a result, managers should help employees, for example, feel a sense of accomplishment and recognize that they are contributing to society as an intrinsic reward. Finally, human resource managers must be mindful of their selection and placement decisions. Ensure that members are highly motivated to serve in the public sector and have the desired regulatory focus.

Supportive supervisor behavior and helping behaviors in the hotel sector: assessing the mediating effect of employee engagement and moderating influence of perceived organizational obstruction

While emerging studies pay much attention to the supervisory support-employee performance relationship, the supportive supervisor consequences on employees' attitudes and behaviors have attracted little attention in this relationship. In spite of the growing concern about employees' helping behaviors as a tool that directly benefit coworkers to be work-role focused and improve performance, supportive supervisor behavior that represents the psychological, physical, cognitive, and esteem assistance has also been deemed to be a catalyst of employees' helping behaviors. Also, it is worth noting that employees exhibit helping behaviors when they are highly engaged in work role focus, activation, and positive affect. However, little has been espoused on how supportive behaviors could enhance employees' loyalty to spark helping behaviors. Owing to this narrative, this study draws on social exchange theory and reciprocity norm to examine the mediating role of employee engagement in the effects of supportive supervisor behavior on hotel employees' helping behaviors. Also, this study examined the boundary role of perceived organizational obstruction based on perceived organizational support as proposed by organizational support theory. Using a time lag of six months, a two-wave data were gathered from 461 full‒time frontline employees working in 3-5 star hotels in Ghana. Hierarchical regression was used to analyze the hypothesized relationships. The results demonstrated that supportive supervisor behavior positively related to employees' helping behaviors. Besides, intellectual, social, and affective engagement partly mediated the relationship between supportive manager behavior and employees' helping behavior. Moreover, perceived organizational obstruction moderated the relationship between intellectual engagement and employees' helping behavior. However, failed to moderate social and affective engagement relationships with employees' helping behaviors.

Self-leadership as an attribute of service leadership: Its relationship to well-being among university students in Hong Kong

Introduction

In the scientific literature, although conceptual models and empirical evidence have shown that leadership attributes are intimately linked to the well-being of followers, there is a lack of studies focusing on leadership in the service economy. According to the Service Leadership Theory, service leadership is a process that satisfies the needs of self, others, and systems (teams, organizations, communities, and societies) in ethical ways that is characterized by leadership competence, character, and care. With specific reference to self-leadership emphasized in service leadership, higher levels of service leadership attributes should promote personal well-being. However, the relationships between "service leadership attributes" and "well-being" in leaders at the intrapersonal level in leadership education among Chinese university students are rarely examined.

Methods

In this study, we collected data from 198 students to understand the linkages between "service leadership attributes" and "well-being" in university students taking a course on service leadership. For tracking changes in students, we collected both pretest and posttest data on validated measures of "service leadership attributes" (i.e., "knowledge," "attitude," and "behavior") and "well-being" (i.e., "positive youth development attributes" and "life satisfaction").

Results

Results showed that the posttest scores on all three domains of "service leadership attributes" as well as two dimensions of "well-being" encompassing life satisfaction and positive youth development attributes were higher than the respective pretest scores, suggesting that students experienced a shift in a positive direction after taking the course. Cross-lagged analyses showed that pretest service leadership attitude and behavior predicted posttest positive youth development attributes; pretest service leadership behavior predicted posttest life satisfaction. Pretest life satisfaction also predicted posttest service leadership behavior.

Discussion

Findings suggest that there is an intimate relationship between "service leadership attributes" and "well-being" in the "pre-work" context among university students.

Humble leadership and its outcomes: A meta-analysis

The importance of humble leadership has garnered attention from both researchers and practitioners. Unfortunately, despite the accumulation of recent findings on the effects of leader humility, a quantitative review remains scant. In addressing this void, this study is among the first to conduct a meta-analytic review of humble leadership and its outcomes. Eighty-four correlations (N = 16,534) from 53 independent studies are synthesized. The authors found that: (a) humble leadership is positively related to affective commitment (ρ = 0.56), affective trust (ρ = 0.62), creativity (ρ = 0.39), engagement (ρ = 0.40), leader-member exchange (LMX) (ρ = 0.58), job satisfaction (ρ = 0.51), organizational identification (ρ = 0.48), psychological empowerment (ρ = 0.33), self-efficacy (ρ = 0.24), task performance (ρ = 0.33), and voice (ρ = 0.34); and that (b) humble leadership contributes a significant incremental variance beyond transformational, servant, and ethical leadership in several crucial criterion variables, providing solid evidence for the construct's uniqueness. However, humble leadership does not explain incremental variance in some criterion variables, indicating that future studies should control for the influence of some positive leadership (e.g., transformational and servant leadership). Age, gender, study design, country, and year partially moderate the correlations of interest. We discuss our findings with caution and propose future research directions.

A meta-analysis of leadership and intrinsic motivation: Examining relative importance and moderators

This paper provides the first meta-analytic examination of the relationship between leadership and followers' intrinsic motivation. In particular, we examined 6 leadership variables (transformational, ethical, leader-member exchange, servant, empowering, and abusive supervision) using data from 50 independent samples and 21,873 participants. We found that transformational leadership, ethical leadership, leader-member exchange (LMX), servant leadership, and empowering leadership were positively related to intrinsic motivation, whereas abusive supervision was negatively linked to intrinsic motivation. Although these leadership styles were associated with intrinsic motivation, they varied considerably in their relative importance. Empowering, ethical, and servant leadership emerged as the more important contributors to intrinsic motivation than transformational leadership. LMX showed a similar contribution with transformational leadership to intrinsic motivation. Effectiveness of leadership styles in relation to intrinsic motivation varied by power distance, publication year, and journal quality. Drawing on our findings, we discuss the theoretical and practice implications.

The antecedents and outcomes of career optimism: a meta-analysis

Purpose

Given its importance, career optimism (CO) has drawn much attention from researchers. Fruitful evidence has been accumulated; unfortunately, a quantitative review is still lacking, which would limit the continuous development of this field. To address this, this paper uses the meta-analysis technology to evaluate the links between CO and its antecedents and outcomes.

Design/methodology/approach

This study used Hunter–Schmidt method random effect meta-analysis technology to systematically evaluate the true score correlations between CO and its antecedents and outcomes.

Findings

Among the CO antecedents, this study found significant links between CO and agreeableness (ρ = 0.11), career adaptability (ρ = 0.55), career knowledge (ρ = 0.43), career decision self-efficacy (ρ = 0.52), social support (ρ = 0.30), conscientiousness (ρ = 0.54), extraversion (ρ = 0.38), gender (ρ = 0.07), GPA (ρ = 0.11), neuroticism (ρ = −0.42), and openness (ρ = 0.27). Moreover, among the CO outcomes, significant links have been found between CO and academic satisfaction (ρ = 0.43), career choice satisfaction (ρ = 0.44), career decisiveness (ρ = 0.37), depersonalization (ρ = −0.48), and emotional exhaustion (ρ = −0.59).

Originality/value

By conducting the first meta-analysis of CO, our study contributes to the CO literature. Additionally, our study increases the knowledge of CO, which would help leaders in the school or workplace to understand the significance of CO better and thereby take actions to intervene and increase students or employees' CO.

How shared leadership affects team performance: examining sequential mediation model using MASEM

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to reveal a sequential mediating process of the impact of shared leadership on team performance by studying the sequential mediating effect of team trust and team learning behavior.

Design/methodology/approach

This study develops and examines a sequential mediation model using the meta-analytic structural equation modeling (MASEM) method. The sample adopted consists of 347 independent effect sizes extracted from 280 empirical papers (288 independent studies, N = 21,888 groups).

Findings

The results indicate that team trust and team learning behavior play a sequential mediating effect in the shared leadership–team performance relationship.

Practical implications

The findings suggest that practitioners should share leadership functions and responsibilities among talented team members. Furthermore, practitioners should strengthen the emotional interaction among team members and give positive feedback to the team's intensive learning behaviors.

Originality/value

By identifying the sequential mediating effect of team trust and team learning behavior, this study not only advances the understandings of a comprehensive mediating process through which shared leadership enhances team performance, but also offers new insights into the interrelationship of different types of mediating mechanisms (i.e. team emergent state and team process) in the shared leadership–team performance relationship.

Enhancing and Extending the Meta-Analytic Comparison of Newer Genre Leadership Forms

Interest in leadership research is growing, however, the rate of leadership learning is slowing down due to the proliferation of new leadership constructs. The objective of the present meta-analysis is to address the significant shortcomings in prior meta-analytic research on newer genre leadership forms by (a) utilizing a substantially greater number of studies and observations than in previous meta-analyses and (b) examining the meta-analytic correlations among the newer genre leadership forms. The results of the present study indicate that the newer genre leadership forms overlap to a greater degree than previously reported, while at the same time accounting for some degree of unique variance in the literature's most studied outcome variables; estimates of the relative contribution of each leadership form to the outcomes are provided, providing new insights into the distinctiveness of each leadership form. The findings suggest that pursuing an integrated theory and measure of newer genre leadership forms is a desirable future step for leadership research.

How Servant Leadership Sparks Feedback-Seeking Behavior: A Moderated Mediation Model

Drawing upon social information processing theory, we propose that moqi with supervisors mediates the relationship between servant leadership and follower feedback-seeking behavior. Subordinates’ traditionality plays a moderating role in this process. A total of 440 Chinese working adults responded to the two-wave questionnaire survey in paper and pencil forms. Correlation analyses, mediation analysis, and moderated mediation analysis was performed through R and SPSS PROCESS Macro. The results revealed that servant leadership positively correlates with followers’ feedback-seeking behavior via moqi with supervisors. Moreover, these indirect effects of servant leadership were moderated by traditionality, such that servant leadership had weaker relations with feedback-seeking behavior when traditionality was higher (vs. lower). Theoretical contributions and practical implications, limitations and suggestions for further study were discussed.

A Systematic Review of Leadership Styles in Organizations: Introducing the Concept of a Task-Relationship–Change Leadership Network

Despite the leadership literature involving a spread spectrum of relevant frameworks to explain leadership behaviors, there is still an ever-increasing demand for more conceptual transparency in leadership styles, characteristics, and their impacts on members and organizations. This study aims to systematically review and identify all the leadership styles and presents a leadership network of all styles based on the seven steps proposed by Scaringella and Radziwon [2018] . A total of 59 articles were consequently selected according to the protocols and then the predominant leadership styles, as well as their characteristics, were investigated and classified in terms of the three criteria namely “task”, “relationship”, and “change” and a [Formula: see text] leadership network was created covering retrogressive and passive leadership (frame 1.1), authentic and exchange-oriented leadership (frame 9.1), influential and transactional leadership (frame 1.9), transformational leadership (frame 9.9), and balanced leadership (frame 5.5). The proposed network indeed coherently covers all the leadership styles reviewed and presents a framework for shifting towards transformational leadership. This network should be viewed as a coherent entirety and all the six leadership concepts including training, behaviors, culture, competencies, succession, and evaluation need to be taken into consideration.

The Impact of Social Factors on Job Crafting: A Meta-Analysis and Review

Despite the considerable focus on job characteristics and individual differences in job crafting research, the influence of social factors on job crafting has not been well-acknowledged. Based on social interaction and job crafting literature, this meta-analysis estimates the associations between social factors (i.e., organizational insiders and outsiders) and job crafting, and how these social factors contribute to employee outcomes through their job crafting. Based on a sample of 51 empirical studies that included 54 independent samples (N = 17,863), we found that social factors of positive leadership styles (e.g., empowering and transformational) and coworker support were positively related to employee job crafting. Moreover, leadership showed a stronger correlation with employee job crafting than coworker support and Leader-Member-Exchange (LMX). Further, our study showed that employee job crafting positively mediates the relationships between social factors and work outcomes (e.g., job performance and well-being). Our study contributes to job crafting literature by integrating social factors into the job crafting model and demonstrating that the social context of work (in particular organizational insiders) plays a crucial role in shaping employees’ job crafting behavior. We also emphasize the critical role that job crafting plays in transmitting valuable social resources into improved work outcomes. Building on our results, we provide future direction for job crafting research and discuss how our results can imply practice in terms of job crafting training.