Abstract

The ability to respond appropriately to employees' work-related well-being requires leaders to pay attention to their employees' well-being in the first place. We propose that leaders' stress mindset, that is, the belief that stress is enhancing versus debilitating, may bias their perception of employees' well-being. We further propose that this judgment then influences leaders' intention to engage in or refrain from health-oriented leadership behavior, to express higher performance expectations, or to promote their employees. We expect this process to be stronger if leaders strongly identify with their team, increasing their perceived similarity with their employees. In three experiments (N-1 = 198, N-2 = 292, N-3 = 250), we tested the effect of participants' stress mindset on their intention to show certain leadership behaviors, mediated by their perception of employee well-being (emotional exhaustion, somatic symptoms, work engagement) and moderated by their team identification. Our findings largely support the association between stress mindset and the perception of well-being. The results for the proposed mediation and the moderating function of identification were mixed. Overall, the results emphasize the critical role of leaders' stress mindset and may, thus, improve health promotion in organizations by helping leaders to adequately recognize employees' well-being and respond appropriately.

Keyword

emotional exhaustion ;  leadership ;  stress mindset ;  team identification ;  work engagement

Abstract

Considering recent corporate scandals, organizations have increased their efforts to curb unethical employee behavior. However, little is known about whether leaders comply with these efforts and how they respond to unethical employee behavior, especially when unethical actions benefit the organization. By integrating arguments from social identity and moral disengagement theories, we develop and test a model to explain how leaders respond to unethical pro-organizational behavior (UPB) among employees. Results from one multi-wave, multi-source field study and one experiment showed that leader perceptions of employee UPB were positively related to leader trust in employees when leaders identified strongly with their organization or when they had a strong propensity to morally disengage. Moreover, the results revealed an important three-way interaction effect. Leaders put considerable trust into UPB-enacting employees when leaders both identified strongly with the organization and showed high levels of moral disengagement. In contrast, they put little trust into UPB-enacting employees when leaders identified weakly with the organization and reported low moral disengagement. Furthermore, results showed that leader trust ultimately translated into perceived leader justice toward employees. These findings provide new and important insights into when organizations can(not) rely on their leaders to manage unethical employee behaviors.

Keyword

justice ;  leadership ;  moral disengagement ;  moral disengagement theory ;  organizational identification ;  social identity theory ;  unethical pro‐organizational behavior

Abstract

Although researchers and practitioners increasingly focus on health promotion in organizations, research has been mainly fragmented and fails to integrate different organizational levels in terms of their effects on employee health. Drawing on organizational climate and social identity research, we present a cascading model of organizational health climate and demonstrate how and when leaders' perceptions of organizational health climate are linked to employee well-being. We tested our model in two multisource studies (N-Study 1 = 65 leaders and 291 employees; N-Study 2 = 401 leader-employee dyads). Results showed that leaders' perceptions of organizational health climate were positively related to their health mindsets (i.e., their health awareness). These in turn were positively associated with their health-promoting leadership behavior, which ultimately went along with better employee well-being. Additionally, in Study 1, the relationship between perceived organizational health climate and leaders' health mindsets was moderated by their organizational identification. High leader identification strengthened the relationship between perceived organizational health climate and leaders' health mindsets. These findings have important implications for theory and practice as they show how the dynamics of an organizational health climate can unfold in organizations and how it is related to employee well-being via the novel concept of health-promoting leadership.

Keyword

employee health ;  health mindset ;  health-promoting leadership ;  organizational health climate ;  organizational identification