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. 2017 Aug;33(3):211-222.
doi: 10.1002/smi.2697. Epub 2016 Jul 29.

If Only my Leader Would just Do Something! Passive Leadership Undermines Employee Well-being Through Role Stressors and Psychological Resource Depletion

Julian Barling  1 , Michael R Frone  2
Affiliations

If Only my Leader Would just Do Something! Passive Leadership Undermines Employee Well-being Through Role Stressors and Psychological Resource Depletion

Julian Barling et al. Stress Health. 2017 Aug.

Abstract

The goal of this study was to develop and test a sequential mediational model explaining the negative relationship of passive leadership to employee well-being. Based on role stress theory, we posit that passive leadership will predict higher levels of role ambiguity, role conflict and role overload. Invoking Conservation of Resources theory, we further hypothesize that these role stressors will indirectly and negatively influence two aspects of employee well-being, namely overall mental health and overall work attitude, through psychological work fatigue. Using a probability sample of 2467 US workers, structural equation modelling supported the model by showing that role stressors and psychological work fatigue partially mediated the negative relationship between passive leadership and both aspects of employee well-being. The hypothesized, sequential indirect relationships explained 47.9% of the overall relationship between passive leadership and mental health and 26.6% of the overall relationship between passive leadership and overall work attitude. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Keywords: Conservation of Resources theory; laissez-faire leadership; mental health; passive leadership; psychological work fatigue; role stressors.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Conceptual model of passive leadership, role stressors, psychological work fatigue, and employee well-being.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Structural equation modeling results for the revised conceptual model (weighted). N = 2,467. Standardized path coefficients are shown. To simplify presentation of the model, the standardized factor loadings for the latent variables are shown in Table 2. Correlations among the latent mediator and between the latent outcome variables are shown in Table 3. All path coefficients are significant at p < .001.
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