Government leaders who want to promote a collective response to disrupting events, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, need to foster a shared understanding of the crisis through effective communication. However, the tone and content of communication varies across and within countries and led to conflicting results in terms of collective sensemaking. To understand how government leaders’ messages shape emotional and cognitive responses of citizens, we designed a 2x2 vignette experiment in which we manipulate the framing (pessimistic vs. optimistic) and content of the message (specific vs. general) delivered by a political leader. Results from 436 participants showed that while the tone of leader’s messages has significant implications for the levels of anxiety and evaluation of the government’s truthfulness and its overall response to the crisis, the content of the leader’s message matters less. Furthermore, these effects were particularly experienced by women and left-leaning participants. Overall, our results highlight the importance of the leader’s communication strategies on influencing the public’s emotional reactions, as well as the perceptions of government effectiveness in dealing with the crisis.
During COVID-19 pandemic, physicians are being exposed to unprecedented adverse working conditions that lead to increased occurrence of burnout. While supportive leadership is considered effective in preventing burnout, little is known about the role of leadership in extreme situations. Drawing on leader-member exchange (LMX) theory, we hypothesize that high-LMX relationships lead to lower levels of burnout, as they shape physicians’ perceptions of psychosocial job demands and resources. We also contend that this effect will be stronger for frontline physicians, as they are more exposed to job stressors. In a field study with 2,708 Brazilian physicians, we found support to the alleviating role of LMX, but contrary to what we predicted, we found that this effect is weaker for frontline physicians. Overall, our findings reinforce the importance of establishing high-quality relationships between supervisors and medical staff to mitigate the experience of burnout, however, they also highlight that extreme conditions, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, might constrain the beneficial effects of leadership behaviors.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to propose and test a model to examine how the active management of work-family boundary strength acts as behavioral mechanism through which role-based factors – role demands and role identity – influence the conflict experienced by individuals.
Design/methodology/approach
Three studies were conducted to examine the proposed model. Studies 1 and 2 used an experimental design to test the causal effects of role demands on the strength of work and family boundaries, whereas Study 3 surveyed 389 working professionals to test the interactional and mediating effects of the model variables on inter-role conflict.
Findings
Results suggest that increasing demands in one domain weaken the boundary strength around the cross-domain to make resource drain possible, which, in turn, increases the conflict experienced in that domain; moreover, results show that work identity reinforces the weakening of the boundary strength at home caused by increasing work demands.
Research limitations/implications
The study of boundary management decisions as an underlying mechanism through which individuals’ role-based factors affect work-family conflict (WFC) can offer new insights into how to manage increasing work-family responsibilities.
Practical implications
This study findings can help individuals to cope with role demands and organizations to promote a culture that supports work-family balance.
Originality/value
This paper advances WFC research by examining alternative mechanisms through which role demands influence WFC. Methodologically, the research improves on past studies by bringing together experimental and correlational designs.
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