Employees’ voluntary green behavior (EVGB) is indispensable in realizing organizations’ environmental sustainability objectives. Leaders can act as catalysts to shape the behavior of their employees. On EVGB, noticeably the missing link is investigating the influence of servant leadership and the mechanism through which it operates. Building upon self-determination and psychological empowerment theories, this research examined the impact of servant leadership on EVGB through the simple and sequential mediation of psychological empowerment and autonomous motivation for the environment (AME). Through systematic sampling, dyadic data were collected from 315 pairs of subordinates and supervisors working in the power sector organizations of Pakistan. Results were obtained by employing the partial least squares structural modeling (PLS-SEM) technique with Smart-PLS 3.2.8 software. Findings revealed that psychological empowerment and AME simply and sequentially mediate the influence of servant leadership on EVGB. Implications for theory and organizational practitioners are offered, accompanied by suggestions for future research.
Employees' pro-environmental behavior serves as a cornerstone in realizing organizations' sustainability initiatives. Leadership plays a vital role in shaping and nurturing the desired employee behaviors. Building upon social learning and self-determination theories, we developed and tested a research model that investigated the mediating role of employees' green intrinsic motivation and the moderating influence of their green self-efficacy on the relationship between green servant leadership and proenvironmental behavior. Data were collected in two waves from 323 pairs of employee-manager working in Pakistan's energy sector and analyzed with partial least squares path modeling (PLS-PM). The findings endorsed that green servant leadership influences pro-environmental behavior through the mediating mechanism of green intrinsic motivation. Further, green self-efficacy played an interactive role with green servant leadership in shaping pro-environmental behavior. This research responds to multiple calls for research and advances the knowledge on servant leadership and pro-environmental behavior.
Background
Public health emergencies and epidemics shatter the assumptions of the world as a safe place. Healthcare workers are at the forefront of such pressures resulting from a persistent threat to their safety and well being. It is therefore important to study such mechanisms that can influence and predict the psychological distress of nurses
Objectives
While there is an increasing number of studies on positive outcomes of leadership styles, their influence on curbing unwanted adverse outcomes is scarce. This study aims to observe the influence of an inclusive leadership style on psychological distress while assessing the mediating role of psychological safety. It uses the theoretical lens of job demands-resources theory and the theory of shattered assumptions to develop and test hypotheses.
Design
Cross-Sectional Study with Temporal Separation
Settings and Participants
The researchers recruited 451 on-duty registered nurses from 5 hospitals providing patient care during the highly infectious phase of COVID-19 in January 2020 in Wuhan city, the epicentre of the outbreak in China
Methods
After obtaining permission from hospital administration, data were collected through an online questionnaire survey in three stages with temporal separation to avoid common method bias. Partial least square structural equation modelling was used to analyze data. The study controlled for effects of age, gender, experience, working hours and education.
Results
Hypothesized relationships proved significant. Inclusive leadership has an inverse relationship with psychological distress with a strong path-coefficient. Psychological safety mediates the relationship between inclusive leadership and psychological distress while explaining 28.6% variance. Multi-group analysis results indicate no significant differences between respondents based on these control variables
Conclusions
Recurring or prolonged experiences of stress and anxiety at the workplace, without a mechanism to counter such effects, can culminate into psychological distress. Inclusive leadership style can serve as such a mechanism to curb psychological distress for healthcare workers by creating a psychologically safe environment.
Traumatic events such as a pandemic shatter the assumption of the workplace as a safe place. Nurses face risks of life-threatening infection, which can create psychological distress. Quality of care for infected patients depends on mental well-being of nurses which calls for research on predictors of stress among health care workers. Responding to a call for research on the effects of leadership styles on psychological distress during traumatic events, this paper uses the theoretical lens of social exchange theory and contributes to literature on relationships between inclusive leadership, psychological distress, work engagement, and self-sacrifice. Participants of this cross sectional study included 497 registered nurses from five hospitals in Wuhan. Data were collected with temporal separation through an online questionnaire. Partial least-squares structural equation modeling was used to analyze data. Results show inclusive leadership has a significant negative relationship with psychological distress. Work engagement mediates this relationship, and nurses’ self-sacrificial behavior moderates it. Findings indicate inclusive leadership style serves as a sustainable mechanism to reduce psychological distress during pandemics. It can operationalize the delivery of mental health support in real-time in work settings. Results provide empirical support for social exchange theory through high work engagement to help control psychological distress among nurses.
Aims
This study examines the role of servant leadership through the mechanism of psychological safety in curbing nurses' burnout during the COVID‐19 pandemic.
Background
During the COVID‐19 pandemic, studies have shown an increased level of stress and burnout among health care workers, especially nurses. This study responds to the call for research to explore the mechanisms of servant leadership in predicting nurses' burnout by employing the perspective of conservation of resources theory.
Methods
Through a cross‐sectional quantitative research design, data were collected in three waves from 443 nurses working in Pakistan's five public sector hospitals. Data were analysed by employing the partial least squares path modelling (PLS‐PM) technique.
Results
Servant leadership (β = −0.318; 95% CI = 0.225, 0.416) and psychological safety (β = −0.342; CI = 0.143, 0.350) have an inverse relationship with nurses' burnout and explain 63.1% variance.
Conclusions
Servant leadership significantly reduces nurses' burnout, and psychological safety mediates this relationship.
Implications for Nursing Management
Human resource management policies in health care must emphasize training nursing leaders in servant leadership behaviour.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.