The Effect of Exploitative Leadership on Workplace Loneliness

The study aims to examine the mediating role of emotional exhaustion and the moderating role of power distance between exploitative leadership and workplace loneliness. Data for the study were obtained from 215 questionnaires of Chinese full-time employees, hierarchical regression analysis and PROCESS Macro was used to test the research hypotheses. Based on affective events theory and the results of the data analysis, the authors found that exploitative leadership was positively related to workplace loneliness and that emotional exhaustion mediated this relationship. Moreover, the results showed that the power distance moderated the relationship between exploitative leadership and workplace loneliness, with the higher the power distance, the weaker the effect of exploitative leadership on workplace loneliness. Therefore, organizations should reject the exploitative leadership style and adopt a more egalitarian and honest approach to their followers.