Linking leadership styles to work engagement

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between leadership styles, psychological capital and job engagement. Design/methodology/approach Data were collected among knowledge workers working no less than 1 year in three high-tech enterprises in Henan Province, China. The investigation was conducted with the cooperation from the human resource departments of the selected enterprises from August to October 2014. To minimize potential common method bias, the authors adopted a cross-lagged design with a time gap of four months. The statistical methods included descriptive statistics, structural equation modeling (SEM) and bootstrap analysis. Findings The results showed: leadership styles significantly influenced employees’ psychological capital and work engagement; specifically, transformational and transactional leadership positively predicted employees’ psychological capital and work engagement; compared with transactional leadership, transformational leadership had stronger predictive power to employees’ psychological capital and work engagement; employees’ psychological capital positively predicted their work engagement; and employees’ psychological capital acts as partial mediator between leadership styles and employees’ work engagement. Originality/value Although a body of studies have shown that leadership is an important factor influencing employees’ work attitude and outcomes, it is only in recent years that the effect mechanism of leadership becomes a hot subject in organizational behavior and management fields. As for leadership styles, in general, most research concerned transformational leadership, rather than transactional leadership and only a little of research compared the effects of transformational leadership and transactional leadership on employees’ work outcomes. In terms of outcomes of leadership, as noted earlier, the previous research mainly explored job performance, job satisfaction, innovation behavior, job burnout and so on. Regarding the effect of leadership styles on employees’ work engagement, in spite of more and more supportive evidence of the link between transformational leadership and work engagement, few studies examined the relationship between transactional leadership and work engagement. What’s more, to the best of our knowledge, till now, no empirical research has explored the internal mechanism of this effect from the perspective of psychological capital. Therefore, the present study is a breakthrough for the direct model of leadership styles and employees’ engagement, theoretically bridges the research gap and contributes to the existing literature by presenting a new picture of leadership behavior effect mechanism.

On the Link between Transformational Leadership and Employees’ Work Engagement: The Role of Psychological Empowerment

“…Various explanatory mechanisms have been proposed for the relationship between transformational leadership and employees' work engagement (e.g., Bui, Zeng, & Higgs, 2017;Li, Castaño, & Li 2018). However, studies that approached empowerment as such a mechanism are non-existent.…”

Propiedades psicométricas del Instrumento para evaluar capital psicológico en las Organizaciones Ipsicap-24

“…Adicionalmente, para obtener evidencia de validez convergente se trabajó con la segunda muestra de este estudio (N = 428), estos trabajadores respondieron el Ipsicap-24 y el UWES adaptado para población colombiana. Esta última prueba mide engagement, variable en la literatura sobre comportamiento organizacional positivo, que ha mostrado estar relacionada positivamente con capital psicológico (Simons & Buitendach, 2013;De Waal & Pienaar, 2013;Görgens-Ekermans & Herbert, 2013;Paek, Schuckert, Kim & Lee, 2015;Karatepe & Karadas, 2015;Lorenz et al, 2016;Li, Castaño, & Li, 2018). Todas las correlaciones, entre las respectivas dimensiones, y capital psicológico y engagement, son positivas y significativas (p < 0.01), como se indica en la Tabla 6.…”

“…En una muestra de la industria hotelera, Karatepe y Karadas (2015) encontraron que los empleados con alto capital psicológico (PCQ-24) también mostraban altos niveles de engagement (UWES); Lorenz et al (2016) aportan información sobre correlaciones positivas y significativas entre el capital psicológico (CPC-12) y engagement (UWES). Por último, Li et al (2018), en empresas de alta tecnología, informan que el capital psicológico (PCQ-24) predice positivamente el engagement de los empleados (UWES). Por otra parte, adicionalmente, en este estudio también se encontró evidencia de validez divergente para el Ipsicap-24 (Tabla 7).…”

Mutuality, empowerment and fit in creative knowledge work performance

“…Engagement is seen as the main indicator for well performed work and just recently from the general workforce category, the investigation turned on knowledge workers (Li, Castaño, & Y. Li, 2018, Jha, Pandey, & Varkkey, 2018. Baron (2012) state that engagement taxonomy is binary -emotional and transactional.…”

“…Afsar, Yuosre F, Badir, and Hafeez (2016) argues that psychological empowerment differs from traditional empowerment which comprised a set of managerial practices solely focusing on delegation principles and that transformational leadership style is preferred over transactional as empirical evidence shows organizational performance. Leadership style has a strong impact on knowledge worker engagement (Li, Castaño, & Li, 2018). By providing a strong role model, they activate a social learning process (Zohar, 2016) whereby employees observe their leaders to define value priorities and sense making in work environments and practices.…”