Preconditions and Mechanisms of Leadership: The Impact on Employee Well-Being

Abstract

The goal of this dissertation is to complement research evidence of the relationship between leadership and employee well-being. Because the workforce in general, and particularly in the social care sector, is highly affected by stress and decreased mental well-being, better understanding of ways of enhancing employee well-being is greatly needed. According to research, leadership is directly and indirectly associated with employee well-being, and the link between these variables is well-established. However, many questions remain regarding how to optimally enhance employee well-being through leadership. For example, at the start of this dissertation, exactly how leaders can best influence employee well-being was unclear: although many work characteristics had been found to mediate the leadership-well-being relationship, thus indirectly linking leadership to employee well-being, their relative effectiveness was unclear. Thus, the first objective of this dissertation was to perform a meta-analysis to examine the relative effects of different job demand and job resource categories (personal, task-related, organizational and relational resources, and challenge and hindrance demands) in the relationship between transformational leadership and various aspects of employee well-being (affective- motivational, pleased-relaxed, depressed-exhausted and irritated-distressed) to enhance knowledge regarding the most relevant factors. The results of the first publication indicated that all of the examined job demand and resource categories are relevant mediators in the relationship between transformational leadership and employee well-being, while organizational resources were identified as the strongest mediator. The results also indicated that the relational patterns among leadership, work characteristics and well-being were different depending on the examined well-being outcomes. This indicates to choose well-being outcomes purposefully. The second publication in this work, through a longitudinal, three-wave analysis, investigated organizational antecedents of leadership and found that organizational health climate is a valuable precondition for health-oriented leadership in childcare center teams. The role of health-oriented leadership as a mediator of organizational health climate and employee well-being within and between teams was also examined. Leadership was found to be a mediator linking health climate and job satisfaction in teams. The implications of these findings were discussed, on the basis of two levels of analysis (between-team and within-team). Next to the question of how (health-oriented) leaders can be most optimally equipped and most effective in enhancing employee well-being, it is also important to gain knowledge regarding how to train leaders to behave in a supportive manner. Thus, the third publication in this work involved a longitudinal cluster-randomized controlled trial examining the effectiveness of training childcare center directors through a supportive leadership intervention in enhancing employees’ social and hedonic well-being. The intervention was found to effectively increase the social well-being of childcare employees at 1-month postintervention. It was more effective in increasing social well-being and decreasing emotional exhaustion among employees with higher rather than lower perceived quantitative workloads. Thus, this work identified an important boundary condition for the implementation of interventions. This dissertation discusses the results of the three publications in light of complementing existing evidence regarding leadership and employee well-being, and describes limitations and avenues for future research in this field, on the basis of the results. It also provides practical implications for enhancing employee well-being, particularly in the social care sector. It is aimed at making a valuable contribution to research on leadership and employee well-being, and to the field of social care.