Is Transformational Leadership Healthy for Employees? A Multilevel Analysis in 16 Nations

Abstract

Is transformational leadership healthy for employees? A multilevel analysis in 16 nations ** This study examines the potential health promoting and hampering effects of transformational, contingent reward and laissez-faire leadership across 16 countries with a multi-source dataset comprising 93,576 subordinates in 11,177 teams of a large international company. We analyze how leadership climate strength, defined as the shared perceptions of employees concerning their supervisor's leadership behavior, affects individual employees' health and if leaders who are both transformational and transactional have more healthy employees (augmentation effect). In addition, we investigate how national power distance moderates these relationships. The results of multi-level analysis provide strong support for the health promoting effect of transformational leadership (r = .16 to r = .50), contingent reward (r = .14 to r = .48) and the health hampering effect of laissez-faire leadership (r =-.15 to r =-.43) within the analyzed 16 nations. Having a strong transformational leadership climate is also associated with better perceived health in eight countries. Finally, the augmentation effect was significant in six countries and we also found, as expected, that a high power distance strengthens the health promoting effects of transformational leadership. Overall, this study indicates that having a shared vision as well as clear goals, roles and rewards at work is important for promoting employees' health worldwide.

Transformational leadership and burnout: The role of thriving and followers’ openness to experience.

“…Lastly, as research that examined TFL across multiple countries found that cultural dimensions influence its effects (e.g., Zwingmann et al, 2014), future research is strongly needed that replicates our findings across various countries to determine their reach. In a similar way, as mean levels of OTE have been shown to vary across countries and as it has been argued that OTE has a different function in collectivist nations (Hofstede, 2001;Schmitt et al, 2007), it would be worthwhile to investigate the effect of OTE on the TFL-burnout link in various countries.…”

Leader Behavior as a Determinant of Health at Work: Specification and Evidence of Five Key Pathways

“…Third, to present new instruments and measures to assess and understand health-promoting leadership at work (Franke et al, 2014;Stocker, Jabobshagen, Krings, Pfister, & Semmer, 2014). Fourth, to explore the antecedents and moderators of health-promoting leadership across different levels of an organization and across different cultures (Steffens, Haslam, Kerschreiter, Schuh, & van Dick, 2014;Zwingmann et al, 2014). Fifth, to clarify the role of empowerment and task demands of employees in this process (Walsh et al, 2014;Franke et al, 2014) and also explore the health of leaders as an antecedent of health-promoting leadership and potential spillover processes (Franke et al, 2014).…”

“…First, to understand how and why leadership behavior in organizations promotes (or else harms) the health of employees (Franke, Felfe, & Pundt, 2014;Gregersen, Vincent-Höper, & Nienhaus, 2014;Winkler, Busch, Clasen, & Fohwinkel, 2014;Walsh, Dupré, & Arnold, 2014;Rivkin, Diestel, & Schmidt, 2014). Second, to elucidate potential differences between leadership approaches in explaining health at work (Gregersen et al, 2014;Franke et al, 2014;Zwingmann, Wegge, Wolf, Rudolf, Schmidt, & Richter, 2014). Third, to present new instruments and measures to assess and understand health-promoting leadership at work (Franke et al, 2014;Stocker, Jabobshagen, Krings, Pfister, & Semmer, 2014).…”

Why do employees follow their superiors’ instructions? Identification of the reasons to comply with superiors’ will in a group of Polish employees

“…Another research indicated that transformational leadership and contingent reward supported health promotion among subordinates [6]. Employees led by such superiors reported better health and such result could be observed among employees from all 16 studied countries.…”

“…The extant literature suggests that managers' leadership skills and behavior influence their subordinates' well-being or health through their impact on creating working conditions and the possibility to provide their subordinates with health-promoting resources [5,6,9]. However, many organizations seem to neglect the contribution of the managers to employees' stress, and stress-related illnesses [1].…”