The impacts of transformational leadership on emotional labour in Taiwanese private nonprofit long-term care institutions: the mediating role of psychological contract

Abstract

ABSTRACT Few studies have empirically tested the argument by psychological contract theory regarding ‘supervisors as the makers of employees’ psychological contracts’. To bridge this gap, this research was conducted on the impact of transformational leadership on relational and transactional psychological contracts, associated the emotional labour coping strategies to develop a research model, and investigated the mediating impacts of relational and transactional psychological contracts to validate the theoretical model. The hypotheses proposed in this study were tested through SEM with AMOS 22.0 software, which was also applied to the data collected from 236 nursing staff in 60 private, nonprofit long-term care institutions in Taiwan. As a result, transformational leadership was proven to have direct and opposite effects on the fulfilment of both relational and transactional psychological contracts. The fulfilment of relational and transactional psychological contracts had direct and opposite effects on deep and surface acting. Following that, the transactional and relational psychological contracts fully and negatively mediated the impacts of transformational leadership and surface acting, while the relational and transactional psychological contracts partially and positively mediated the influences of transformational leadership and deep acting. This study has important managerial implications for human resource management in the long-term care industry and institutions.