Leadership Research Summary:
- While previous research has mainly considered leadership as an antecedent to psychological distress and role stressors (i.e., role ambiguity and role conflict) among subordinates, a reverse relationship where these variables influence reports of leadership is also possible. To determine the directionality of the associations this two-wave prospective study assesses bidirectional relationships between fair leadership and role stressors and examines whether psychological distress mediates the reciprocal associations between fair leadership and the role stressors.
- Analyses were conducted in a sample of 6,790 Norwegian employees with a 2-year time-lag between measurement points. Fair leadership was associated with lower stability adjusted role ambiguity, but not role conflict, over time. Role conflict, but not role ambiguity, was related to subsequent reports of the immediate leader as less fair. Psychological distress did neither mediate the relationship between fair leadership and subsequent reports of role stressors, nor the association between role stressors and subsequent reports of fair leadership.
- The findings suggest that the fair leadership – role stressor association is not a one-directional process, but that exposure to role stressors also influence subordinates’ perceptions of leadership. An implication of the findings is that theoretical models of organizational leadership should include this reverse impact of role stressors. To reduce the effects of role stressors, organizations could set consistent, clear and attractive goals and provide employees with necessary information for conducting their work tasks in order to help workers understand and master their roles at the workplace.
Leadership Research Implications and Findings:
- Despite a wealth of research on leadership, there is a shortage of studies employing temporal research design. Hence, this study is among the first to show that leadership can influence the working conditions of subordinates over time. Specifically, we found that subordinates who perceive their immediate leader as fair reported a decrease in role ambiguity, but not role conflict over a 2-year time-period. Hence, the findings add support to the hypothesis that leadership is an antecedent to levels of role ambiguity in an organization (Nielsen et al., 2008; Lawrence and Kacmar, 2012). In addition to confirming leadership as a potential causal factor, a novel finding from this study is that subordinates who experienced high levels of role conflict perceived their immediate leader as less fair over the study period. A main implication of the current study is therefore that theoretical models of organizational behavior, as well as research on leadership, also must take into consideration a reverse relationship where exposures at the workplace also influence how subordinates perceive their leader. A practical implication of the study’s findings is the importance of addressing role stressors in organizations since exposed workers are more likely to experiencing unfairness in the leader-member exchange. Organizations should therefore prioritize setting clear goals, provide employees with necessary information for conducting a given work task, and thereby help workers understand their roles at the workplace.
- They study hypothesized that psychological distress was a mediating mechanism that would explain how fair leadership and role stressors were interrelated. As the study’s findings did not support this assumption, there is a need for research that can replicate our study in other samples and settings, and with modified research designs, as well for time-lagged studies examining alternative mediators that can explain how leadership may influence role stressors as well as how role stressors can influence leadership. Whereas a time-lagged design does not confirm any form of causality, the design does satisfy one essential condition for a cause and effect associations in that the predictor variables are measured prior to the outcome variable (Shamir, 2011). Consequently, an advantage of the full-panel prospective design is that it points to whether fair leadership actually is related to changes in role stressors. Furthermore, the full panel design makes it possible to determine the existence of any reverse associations that add to the understanding of bidirectional relationships between study variables.