A conservation of resources view of the relationship between transformational leadership and emotional exhaustion: The role of extra effort and psychological detachment

The Mediating Effects of Work Characteristics on the Relationship between Transformational Leadership and Employee Well-Being: A Meta-Analytic Investigation

“…This finding was also contrary to our expectations, underscoring the ambivalent nature of challenge demands [ 123 ] and calling for attention to the rest of the work environment in the face of challenge demands. For example, several research works found (personal) job resources to be necessary for employees to retain positive well-being in the face of challenge demands [ 22 , 73 , 74 , 123 ]. Moreover, appraisal processes should be taken into consideration.…”

“…It seems that personal resources, such as occupational self-efficacy or proactivity, although job-specific, are only influenced by the leader to a small degree and rely greatly on personal initiative and past experiences [ 121 , 129 ]. These findings imply that leaders would be most successful in enhancing personal resources by giving their followers room to develop themselves (e.g., by granting time for personal development and encouragement) and supporting organizational initiatives for personal coaching or training [ 22 ].…”

“…Because these analyses did not yield consistent results over different levels of aggregation and did not explain a huge amount of variance, the question of potential moderators remains unanswered and warrants further research. The study of boundary conditions and contextual factors of the TFL–well-being relationship seems to be a promising one here [ 1 ] as, especially when regarding well-being, people might have different starting points and ways to adapt to external stimuli [ 22 , 140 ]. Unfortunately, it is not yet possible to implement such individual-level moderators in meta-analytic research so far, which is why we have to point to primary research to enhance knowledge in this area.…”

“…Although TFL seems to have a predominantly positive effect on employees’ well-being at the workplace [ 2 ], a few studies also find evidence for an exhaustive component of this leadership style (e.g., [ 21 , 22 , 23 ]). While most TFL behaviors pertain to the followers’ needs and support the individual, there seem to be some elements of TFL that can appear overly challenging for employees (i.e., fostering growth, encouraging new ways of thinking, and welcoming the unknown) [ 21 , 24 ].…”

“…While most TFL behaviors pertain to the followers’ needs and support the individual, there seem to be some elements of TFL that can appear overly challenging for employees (i.e., fostering growth, encouraging new ways of thinking, and welcoming the unknown) [ 21 , 24 ]. This may lead employees to burden themselves with an excessive number of job demands or may reduce their job resources, in turn hampering their well-being [ 21 , 22 ]. To shed light on the mechanisms by which TFL leaders convey their impact, we focus on this leadership concept in our analysis.…”