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. 2022 Jun 10;12(1):9555.
doi: 10.1038/s41598-022-13533-2.

The relationship between ambivalence towards supervisor's behavior and employee's mental health

Raphael M Herr  1 , Wendy C Birmingham  2 , Frenk van Harreveld  3 , Annelies E M van Vianen  4 , Joachim E Fischer  5 , Jos A Bosch  5   6
Affiliations

The relationship between ambivalence towards supervisor's behavior and employee's mental health

Raphael M Herr et al. Sci Rep. .

Abstract

Ambivalence in social interactions has been linked to health-related outcomes in private relationships and recent research has started to expand this evidence to ambivalent leadership at the workplace by showing that ambivalent supervisor-employee relationships are related to higher stress levels in employees. However, the mental health consequences of ambivalent leadership have not been examined yet. Using a multilevel approach, this study estimated associations of ambivalent leadership with mental health indicators (depression, anxiety, vital exhaustion, fatigue) in 993 employees from 27 work groups. A total effect of ambivalent leadership was found for all four mental health measures, as well as within-group and between-group effects. The consistent relationships of ambivalent leadership with higher symptoms of mental ill-health at the individual- (i.e., within-group) and the group-level (i.e., between-group) support the existence of an un-confounded association, as well as group effects of collective ambivalence.

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Conflict of interest statement

J.F. has received royalties for lectures regarding occupational health from various companies and public agents. Until 2012 Prof. Fischer was CEO and major shareholder of Health Vision GmbH, who organized the data collection. The other authors have no competing interests to report.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Schematic representation of the ambivalence index.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Conceptual description of within-group effects (i.e., mental health among employees that belong to the same work group as predicted by their ambivalent leadership perceptions), between-group effects (i.e., mean levels of mental health of work groups as predicted by the group-mean ambivalent leadership perceptions), and contextual effects (i.e., mental health of employees that have the same ambivalent leadership rating, but belong to work groups that differ in their mean ambivalent leadership ratings). This contextual effect is demonstrated by significant heterogeneity (Hausman test).
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