Does Participative Leadership Matters in Employees' Outcomes During COVID-19? Role of Leader Behavioral Integrity.

Muhammad Usman,Tahir Farid,Usman Ghani,Jin Cheng,Sadaf Iqbal

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.646442

Abstract

The coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) has badly affected the social, physical, and emotional health of workers, especially those working in the healthcare sectors. Drawing on social exchange theory, we investigated the effects of participative leadership on employees’ workplace thriving and helping behaviors among frontline workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, we examined the moderating role of a leader’s behavioral integrity in strengthening the relationship between participative leadership, and employees’ workplace thriving and helping behaviors. By using a two-wave time-lagged design and data collected from 244 healthcare workers, a moderated hierarchal regression was implemented to test the proposed hypotheses. As hypothesized, participative leadership predicted employees’ workplace thriving and helping behaviors. The leader’s behavioral integrity strengthened the relationship between participative leadership and employees’ thriving and moderated the relationship between participative leadership helping behaviors. Implications for research, theory, and practice are discussed.

Highlights

The COVID-19 pandemic appears to have been the most significant phenomenon of 2020 and has badly affected the health system worldwide (Ornell et al, 2020)
We argue that employees may be less likely to embrace participative leadership and this weakens the relationship between participative leadership and workplace thriving
Participative leadership and leader’s behavioral integrity (LBI) were measured at Time 1, and employees’ workplace thriving and helping behavior were measured at Time 2

Summary

Introduction

The COVID-19 pandemic appears to have been the most significant phenomenon of 2020 and has badly affected the health system worldwide (Ornell et al, 2020). According to the United Nations (2020), this ongoing respiratory disease is the greatest challenge we have faced after the Second World War. As of January 9, 2021, there are over 88.9 million confirmed cases, including 1.9 million deaths. The USA reported over 22 million cases, India 10.4 million, Brazil 8.01 million, Russia 3.32 million, the United Kingdom 2.96 million, France 2.74 million, Turkey 2.30 million, Italy 2.23 million, Spain 2.05 million, and Pakistan about half a million. The USA, Brazil, and India had the highest death toll, with 369,390, 201,460, and 150,570, respectively (World Health Organization, 2020). No single organization has been able to escape from the consequences of the new disease, COVID-19, which has drastically influenced all walks of life, including our social functioning, economy, health, and services (Antonakis, 2020; McKibbin and Fernando, 2020). We have witnessed a substantial workforce reigned by fear, confusion, despair, and uncertainties

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