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

Abstract

Grounding our research in conservation of resources theory, we set out to shed light on the relationship between transformational leadership (TFL) and employee burnout. Specifically, we considered both thriving at work, a personal resource, and employees' openness to experience (OTE), a key resource, to uncover whether all employees benefit equally from TFL (a contextual resource). In detail, we argued that the negative effect of TFL on employee burnout is mediated by employee thriving at work, and that employees' OTE constitutes a boundary condition of this process. Our moderated mediation model was tested with 2 waves of data from 148 employees from a midsized German manufacturing company. The results supported our hypotheses and revealed that employees' thriving at work mediated the link between TFL and reduced burnout. As predicted, these relationships were moderated by employees' personality in such a way that TFL affected thriving and hence burnout of employees high on OTE, but not of employees low on OTE. Taken together, our findings suggest that TFL serves as a resource that protects employees from burning out, but also highlights the need to consider employees' personality in perceptions of and reactions to leadership.

What threatens retail employees' thriving at work under leader‐member exchange? The role of store spatial crowding and team negative affective tone

“…Nevertheless, supervisors generally have intensive interactions with their employees, who stand as a prominent social context providing various resources to employees and affecting their levels of learning and vitality (e.g., Hildenbrand et al, 2018;Russo, Buonocore, Carmeli, & Guo, 2018). Our findings add to this limited inquiry and go one step further by revealing that the impact of leaders on employee thriving is bounded by wider organizational environment (i.e., the physical context of store spatial crowding).…”

“…This research contributes to the thriving literature in several ways. First, while leaders generally have frequent interactions with their direct reports, studies have devoted limited attention to leaders' role in facilitating employee thriving (Hildenbrand et al, ; Niessen et al, ; Paterson et al, ; Walumbwa et al, ). Premised on LMX theory, a relational approach to leadership, our study adds to this emerging line of inquiry by identifying a high‐quality supervisor‐subordinate dyadic relationship as an important local context enabling retail employees' thriving.…”

“…Specifically, we identify leader-member exchange (LMX), which denotes the resource exchange relationship in a supervisor-subordinate dyad (Liden, Sparrowe, & Wayne, 1997), as the proximal precursor of retail employees' thriving. Prior research has demonstrated that transformational leadership (Hildenbrand, Sacramento, & Binnewies, 2018;Niessen, Mäder, Stride, & Jimmieson, 2017), servant leadership (Walumbwa et al, 2018), and supervisor supportive climate (Paterson et al, 2014) can promote employees' experience of thriving. Different from these leadership practices focusing on leader behaviors, LMX captures the dyadic relationship quality between a supervisor and a subordinate that develops overtime (Graen & Uhl-Bien, 1995) and should be a more proximal local context in which an employee is embedded (Bauer & Erdogan, 2016).…”

A Mindfulness Program to Improve Resident Physicians’ Personal and Work-Related Well-being: a Feasibility Study

“…The model is expanded by overcommitment, a trait component that acts as a personal risk factor that can maintain and intensify any effort-reward imbalance . The Thriving at Work Scale (Hildenbrand et al 2018; α = 0.93) measures thriving, defined as "the psychological state in which individuals experience both a sense of vitality and a sense of learning at work" (Spreitzer et al 2005, p. 538). The Faces Scale measures the current level of job satisfaction with one item (Kunin 1955…”

Leading well is a matter of resources: Leader vigour and peer support augments the relationship between transformational leadership and burnout

“…Recent studies suggest that the influence leaders have on followers may differ depending not only on the organisational context and follower characteristics (Hildenbrand, Sacramento, & Binnewies, 2018;Judge & Piccolo, 2004), but also on factors related to the leaders themselves (Jung, Yammarino, & Lee, 2009;Tafvelin, Hyvönen, & Westerberg, 2014). However, research on transformational leadership and burnout has yet to address such moderators.…”