Understanding the Psychological Mechanisms that Explain How Transformational Leadership Influences Employee Psychological Wellbeing

Abstract

his thesis explores the impact of transformational leadership on employee psychological wellbeing by studying the underlying psychological mechanisms that mediate their relationship. Inceoglu et al. (2018) [Inceoglu, I., Thomas, G., Chu, C., Plans, D., & Gerbasi, A. (2018). Leadership behavior and employee wellbeing: An integrated review and a future research agenda. The Leadership Quarterly, 29(1), 179–202. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2017.12.006] theorized five “groupings” of psychological mechanisms—socio-cognitive, motivational, affective, relational, and identification—that could act as mediators. To test this theoretical model, Study 1 collected data from 812 working adults and identified five alternative groupings: relationship with leader, enriched work, clarity, intensification, and agency. These groupings better represent how people perceive and respond to the most frequently used measurement scales that comprise Inceoglu et al.’s five groupings. Study 2 administered a pre-registered survey to 452 working adults across three time waves. The survey included measures of transformational leadership, transactional leadership (contingent reward), the five alternative mechanism groupings identified in Study 1, and two measures of employee psychological wellbeing. The findings from an omnibus model examining the five mechanisms suggest that transformational leadership is associated with increased job-related affective wellbeing only through perceptions of enriched work. Collectively, these studies offer valuable insights into the underlying psychological mechanisms of the relationship between transformational leadership and employee psychological wellbeing, and suggestions for leadership development interventions.