How followers’ emotional stability and cultural value orientations moderate the impact of health-promoting leadership and abusive supervision on health-related resources

Abstract

Health-related resources at work are crucial for followers to stay healthy and to cope with job demands. This study investigates the impact of health-promoting leadership as well as abusive supervision on followers’ social and task resources as antecedents of their health. Moreover, it examines whether the impact of leadership on followers’ health-related resources depends on the followers’ emotional stability and cultural value orientations (i.e. power distance and collectivism). A total of 503 employees from Austria, Germany and Slovenia took part in this online study and provided information on their leaders’ health-promoting behaviour and abusive supervision as well as on their own emotional stability, perceived power distance and collectivism. The results of a hierarchical regression analysis strongly support the importance of simultaneously assessing health-promoting leadership and abusive supervision when predicting task and social resources. Abusive supervision added incremental variance above health-promoting leadership when followers’ task resources were predicted. Moreover, the results suggest that followers benefit from or suffer differently under perceived leadership: high power distance enhances the positive effect of health-promoting leadership on followers’ social resources, while collectivism strengthens the negative impact of abusive supervision on followers’ social resources. Finally, emotionally stable followers who are working with highly abusive leaders experience a stronger threat to their resources compared to emotionally stable followers who are working with less abusive leaders. These results contribute to a deeper understanding of how leaders impact those resources known to influence followers’ health. They further show that follower personality and cultural value orientations determine the impact of leadership behaviour on health-related resources.