The Cross-Level Moderation Effect of Resource-Providing Leadership on the Demands—Work Ability Relationship

Anne Richter, Marta Roczniewska, Carina Loeb, Christiane R. Stempel and Thomas Rigotti
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Anne Richter: Medical Management Center, Department of Learning, Informatics, Management and Ethics, Karolinska Institutet, 171 77 Stockholm, Sweden
Marta Roczniewska: Medical Management Center, Department of Learning, Informatics, Management and Ethics, Karolinska Institutet, 171 77 Stockholm, Sweden
Carina Loeb: School of Health, Care and Social Welfare, Mälardalen University, Box 883, 721 23 Vasteras, Sweden
Christiane R. Stempel: Department of Work & Organizational Psychology, FernUniversität Hagen, 58097 Hagen, Germany
Thomas Rigotti: Department of Work and Organizational Psychology, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, 55128 Mainz, Germany

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 17, 1-13

Abstract: Employees in female-dominated sectors are exposed to high workloads, emotional job demands, and role ambiguity, and often have insufficient resources to deal with these demands. This imbalance causes strain, threatening employees’ work ability. The aim of this study was to examine whether resource-providing leadership at the workplace level buffers against the negative repercussions of these job demands on work ability. Employees (N = 2383) from 290 work groups across three countries (Germany, Finland, and Sweden) in female-dominated sectors were asked to complete questionnaires in this study. Employees rated their immediate supervisor’s resource-providing leadership and also self-reported their work ability, role ambiguity, workload, and emotional demands. Multilevel modeling was performed to predict individual work ability with job demands as employee-level predictors, and leadership as a group-level predictor. Work ability was poor when employees reported high workloads, high role ambiguity, and high emotional demands. Resource-providing leadership at the group level had a positive impact on employees’ work ability. We observed a cross-level interaction between emotional demands and resource-providing leadership. We conclude that resource-providing leadership buffers against the repercussions of emotional demands for the work ability of employees in female-dominated sectors; however, it is not influential in dealing with workload or role ambiguity.

Keywords: emotional demands; workload; role ambiguity; multilevel modeling; psychosocial workplace factors (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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