Following the call of recent reviews on leadership and well-being, the purpose of this study is to examine how and when two contrasting leadership styles, transformational leadership (TFL) and passive-avoidant leadership (PAL), are related to employees' anxiety and thereby either promote or inhibit employees' well-being. Using the prominent job demands-resources (JD-R) model as a theoretical framework, we propose that the relationship between leadership behavior and anxiety is mediated by organizational job demands, namely, role ambiguity (RA), and job resources, namely, team climate for learning (TCL), as well as moderated by autonomy as important job characteristic. A sample of 501 knowledge workers, working in teams in a German research and development (R&D) organization, answered an online survey. We tested moderated multiple mediation models using structural equation modeling (SEM). Results demonstrated that the relationships between TFL as well as PAL on the one hand and anxiety on the other hand were fully mediated by RA and TCL. Job autonomy moderated the quality of the leadership-job demand relationship for TFL and PAL. This paper contributes to understanding the complex relationship between leadership and followers' well-being taking into account a combination of mediating and moderating job demands and resources. This is the first study that examines the effects of TFL and PAL on well-being taking into account the job demand RA and team processes and autonomy as resources.

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The increasing spread of digital technologies and respective consequences for the way we live, work, and communicate can evoke feelings of tension and discomfort. This so-called digitalisation anxiety is related to existing and future technologies, includes the process of digitalisation in everyday life, and refers to multiple levels (the individual, organisations, and society). Existing scales measuring technology-related fears due not adequately reflect these features. Therefore, we developed the German version of the Digitalisation Anxiety Scale (DAS). Having generated items based on a qualitative interview study (Study 1, n = 26), we demonstrated the DAS’s factor structure, internal consistency and construct validity in Study 2a (n = 109) and test-retest reliability in Study 2b (n = 30). In Study 3 (n = 223), the scale’s structure was confirmed and correlates of digitalisation anxiety were examined. The final version of the DAS consists of 35 items with a four-factor structure (societal triggers for digitalisation anxiety, triggers related to interaction and leadership, triggers within oneself and triggers resulting from the digitalisation implementation process). Digitalisation Anxiety had negative relationships with well-being and performance. The scale allows practitioners and researchers to measure and benchmark individuals’ levels of digitalisation anxiety, and to track changes over time. The scale can inform interventions aiming at reducing digitalisation anxiety and stress resulting from digitalisation.

Many current working conditions are characterized by increasing blurred boundaries between work and nonwork with spillover that impact employees’ and recovery processes and wellbeing. Research, although emerging, considers these processes in the leadership-wellbeing relationship insufficiently. The main aim of this study, therefore, was to enhance our understanding of the role of leadership on employee’s work-nonwork interface and wellbeing. To address these processes adequately, longitudinal research is most appropriate. To our best knowledge, no review exists that could inform longitudinal studies on the leadership-employee wellbeing relationship with a focus on spillover and recovery processes. Following the PRISMA Extension for Scoping Reviews, we apply a narrative synthesis of 21 identified studies to organize the research landscape. We make three main contributions: First, we adopt an integrated resource-demands based process perspective and expand the leadership-employee wellbeing relationship by including spillover and recovery. Second, we map the used theoretical approaches and analyzed research gaps. Third, we offer a list of the issues and potential remedies of applied methodologies to orient further research. Results show, that while work-nonwork research is predominantly approached from a negative conflict-based view, research focused more on positive than on negative leadership. We identify two broad categories of investigated mechanisms, namely bolstering/hampering mechanisms, and buffering/strengthening mechanisms. Findings also highlight the importance of personal energy resources and therefore call for more attention to affect-driven theories. The identified predominance of the IT and healthcare sectors and of working parents warrants more representative research. We offer recommendations to advance future research both theoretically and methodologically.