Passive leadership, role stressors, and affective organizational commitment: A time-lagged study among health care employees

Abstract

IntroductionThis study examines the relationships of passive leadership and role stressors to affective organizational commitment among hospital employees. ObjectiveThis study's objective was to understand the mediating effect of role stressors (conflict, overload, and ambiguity) in the relation between passive leadership and affective organizational commitment. MethodWe used a structural equation modeling approach on a sample of 185 hospital employees and a time-lagged design in which predictor and mediators were assessed at Time 1 and affective organizational commitment was obtained 3 years later. ResultsFindings revealed that passive leadership was positively related to all three role stressors and that role ambiguity fully mediated a negative relationship between passive leadership and affective organizational commitment. Moreover, the relationship between passive leadership and role conflict was stronger when role overload was high. ConclusionThis study suggests organizations should strive to limit the emergence of passive leadership behaviors among supervisors due to their detrimental effects on the long-term development of affective commitment via role ambiguity.