Hou Lingyan, Cai Wenjing
School of Public Affairs, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China.
Department of Management & Organization, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Front Psychol. 2024 Jun 17;15:1387624. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1387624. eCollection 2024.
Workplace loneliness has become a prevalent experience among employees in organizations; however, there is limited empirical research on how leaders can address and mitigate this issue. Drawing upon self-determination theory and empowering leadership theory, this study examines the impact of empowering leadership on workplace loneliness by exploring the mediator of role breadth self-efficacy and the moderator of leader-member conversational quality.
A time-lagged research design was used, collecting data through a two-wave online survey involving 531 employees in Chinese public sectors. The participants consisted of 321 males and 210 females, with an average age of 35 years (SD = 7.36).
Our findings indicate that empowering leadership positively influences employees' role breadth self-efficacy, reducing their workplace loneliness. Moreover, leader-member conversational quality strengthens this indirect effect, suggesting that empowering leadership is more effective in reducing workplace loneliness when leader-member conversational quality is high.
This study expands and enriches research on the antecedents of workplace loneliness from the leadership approach, providing valuable insights for organizations to implement interventions that effectively alleviate employees' workplace loneliness.
职场孤独已成为组织中员工普遍存在的一种体验；然而，关于领导者如何应对和缓解这一问题的实证研究有限。本研究借鉴自我决定理论和赋能领导理论，通过探究角色广度自我效能感这一中介变量以及领导-成员对话质量这一调节变量，考察赋能领导对职场孤独的影响。
采用时间滞后研究设计，通过两阶段在线调查收集数据，涉及531名中国公共部门员工。参与者包括321名男性和210名女性，平均年龄35岁（标准差=7.36）。
我们的研究结果表明，赋能领导对员工的角色广度自我效能感有积极影响，从而降低他们的职场孤独感。此外，领导-成员对话质量强化了这种间接效应，表明当领导-成员对话质量较高时，赋能领导在降低职场孤独感方面更有效。
本研究从领导方式的角度拓展和丰富了职场孤独前因的研究，为组织实施有效减轻员工职场孤独感的干预措施提供了有价值的见解。
Zotero 插件