How's the boss? Integration of the health-oriented leadership concept into the job demands-resources theory

Abstract

PurposeHealth-oriented leadership (HoL) encompasses leaders' health behaviors and attitudes toward their followers (StaffCare) and themselves (SelfCare), and there is ample evidence of its positive effects on employee well-being. However, research on the antecedents of StaffCare is still in its infancy and does not account for within-person variability. Therefore, the authors adopt a leader-centered perspective and propose a serial mediation model that links leaders' intrapersonal fluctuations in job resources and demands to StaffCare, mediated by leaders' SelfCare, work engagement and emotional exhaustion.Design/methodology/approachOver five working weeks, 234 school principals responded to a weekly questionnaire, resulting in a total of 956 responses. Multilevel structural equation models were used for analysis.FindingsThe data supported SelfCare as a mechanism in leaders' motivational and health-impairment processes. The proposed serial mediation of the relationship between job resources and StaffCare via leader SelfCare and work engagement was also supported.Practical implicationsThe study can guide job redesign for leaders by highlighting the role of job resources. Investing in interventions aimed at the SelfCare of leaders is likely to have a positive impact on their leadership.Originality/valueThese findings suggest that job characteristics and the leader's well-being shape leader cognitions and behaviors. Therefore, the authors suggest integrating the HoL model into the job demands–resources (JD-R) model for leaders.

“That was one of my most difficult and biggest challenges”: experiences, preconditions and preventive measures of health-oriented leadership in virtual teams – A qualitative study with virtual leaders

“…Further, similarly to our findings, an interview study with leaders from a healthcare organization in Canada found that corporate culture was a relevant enabler of remote work, which included supporting staff, positive perceptions of remote work, a value-focused organization, and embracing geographically dispersed teams [ 53 ]. However, independent of remote work context, studies on HoL investigated leaders’ job resources [ 32 ] and demands [ 48 ], organizational health climate [ 35 , 36 ]), high-performance work practices or health-oriented human resources management strategies [ 37 ] as antecedents of HoL.…”

“…Similarly, there are generally few studies on conducive conditions for HoL [ 11 ]. For the traditional, face-to-face work context, leaders’ own SelfCare [ 32 ], but also job resources related to social relationships (such as social support by colleagues [ 33 ], team health climate [ 34 ] or organizational health climate [ 35 , 36 ]) as well as to work organization (such as high-performance work practices or health-oriented human resources management strategies [ 37 ]) were found to positively influence HoL. For the digital, remote work context, only one pre-pandemic qualitative explorative study assessed work characteristics influencing the application of HoL in virtual teams [ 22 ].…”

SelfCare when working from home: easier but also more important

“…SelfCare is part of the Health-oriented Leadership concept (Franke et al, 2014) which differentiates between StaffCare (promoting followers' health) and SelfCare (promoting one's own health). SelfCare is well-studied for traditional work contexts (Grimm et al, 2021;Kaluza et al, 2021;Klug et al, 2022;Arnold and Rigotti, 2023), but it is an open question how important SelfCare is in digital and hybrid work arrangements, i.e., when SelfCare is displayed at home.…”

“…So far, SelfCare has been mainly studied in the traditional work context. Ample research has already shown that SelfCare at the workplace (on-site) is beneficial to employees' health (Grimm et al, 2021;Kaluza and Junker, 2022;Arnold and Rigotti, 2023). But it is unknown, if SelfCare is also important when working at home.…”

“…Moreover, the effectiveness of SelfCare when working from home is yet unclear. As the effects of SelfCare on health indicators are well-examined in the traditional work context (Grimm et al, 2021;Arnold and Rigotti, 2023), it has to be shown that SelfCare at home is also effective for followers' health. As the effects of SelfCare on work-related attitudes and work performance are less examined in previous research, we also considered work performance as a relevant outcome to extend previous evidence for the effectiveness of SelfCare.…”