Despotic Leadership, Negative Emotions and Project Success; the role of Mindfulness

Abstract

Project success is a real challenge for the project-based organizations. Employee's negative emotions disturb their normal activities in an organization, by creating obstacles in the normal operations of the project-based organization. Therefore, the organization should make efforts to decrease negative emotions of the employees in the organization. For this purpose, the present study tested the mediating role of negative emotions (NE) by linking despotic leadership (DL) with project success (PS) and testing the moderating role of employee mindfulness (EM). Data were collected in time lags from the information technology sector of Pakistan. Results were consistent with our hypothesized framework as despotic leadership increases the negative emotions of the employees that lead to a negative effect on project success. Moreover, mindfulness plays the buffering role in mitigating the damaging impact of despotic leadership on negative emotions. The findings of this study provide evidence that project-based organizations need to develop strategies to decrease employee’s negative emotions.