Leadership behavior has a significant impact on employee behavior, performance and well-being. Extant theory and research on leadership behavior, however, has predominantly focused on employee performance, treating employee well-being (typically measured as job satisfaction) as a secondary outcome variable related to performance, rather than as an important outcome in and of itself. This qualitative state of the science review examines the process by which leadership behavior (i.e., change, relational, task, passive) affects employee well-being. We identify five mediator groupings (social-cognitive, motivational, affective, relational, identification), extend the criterion space for conceptualizing employee well-being (i.e., psychological: hedonic, eudaimonic, negative; and physical), examine the limited evidence for differential processes that underlie the leader behavior-employee well-being relationship and discuss theoretical and methodological problems inherent to the literature.We conclude by proposing a theoretical framework to guide a future research agenda on how, why and when leadership behavior impacts employee well-being.
Forms of well-being vary in their activation as well as valence, differing in respect of energy-related arousal in addition to whether they are negative or positive. Those differences suggest the need to refine traditional assumptions that poor person-job fit causes lower well-being. More activated forms of well-being were proposed to be associated with poorer, rather than better, want-actual fit, since greater motivation raises wanted levels of job features and may thus reduce fit with actual levels. As predicted, activated well-being (illustrated by job engagement) and more quiescent well-being (here, job satisfaction) were found to be associated with poor fit in opposite directions--positively and negatively, respectively. Theories and organizational practices need to accommodate the partly contrasting implications of different forms of well-being.
Emphasizing differences in activation as well as valence, six studies across a range of situations examined relations between types of job-related core affect and 13 self-reported work behaviours. A theory-based measure of affect was developed, and its four-quadrant structure was found to be supported across studies. Also consistent with hypotheses, highactivation pleasant affect was more strongly correlated with positive behaviours than were low-activation pleasant feelings, and those associations tended to be greatest for discretionary behaviours in contrast to routine task proficiency. Additionally as predicted, unpleasant jobrelated affects that had low rather than high activation were more strongly linked to the negative work behaviours examined. Theory and practice would benefit from greater differentiation between affects and between behaviours.
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