Leadership, followers' mental health and job performance in organizations: A comprehensive meta‐analysis from an occupational health perspective

• Published date: 01 March 2017
• Date: 01 March 2017
• Author: Anna Reeske,Diego Montano,Franziska Franke,Joachim Hüffmeier
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/job.2124

Leadership, followers’mental health and job

performance in organizations: A comprehensive

meta-analysis from an occupational health

perspective

DIEGO MONTANO

1

*, ANNA REESKE

2

, FRANZISKA FRANKE

2

AND

JOACHIM HÜFFMEIER

3

1

Institute for Medical Psychology and Sociology, University of Goettingen, Goettingen, Germany

2

Federal Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (BAuA), Dortmund, Germany

3

Institute of Psychology, TU Dortmund University, Dortmund, Germany

Summary The present meta-analysis investigates the associations between leadership, followers’mental health, and job

performance by taking into account different groups of leadership constructs including transformational lead-

ership, relations-oriented leadership, task-oriented leadership, destructive leadership, and leader–member

exchange. Six categories of mental health-related outcomes are considered representing both negative and

positive mental health states of followers, namely, affective symptoms, burnout, stress, well-being, psycho-

logical functioning, and health complaints. Meta-analytic models are used to estimate the association between

these categories of leadership and mental health. Our results reveal that transformational leadership, a high

quality of relations-oriented and task-oriented leadership behavior, as well as a high quality of leader–

follower interaction are positively associated with mental health. In contrast, destructive leadership is strongly

negatively associated with mental health. In addition, the mediation effects of leadership on job performance

via mental health are estimated. Results partially support the mediating role of mental health concerning the

relationship between leadership and job performance. Our results emphasize the importance of leadership as

an occupational health factor, and they may serve as basis for the planning and designing of occupational

health policies and interventions despite existing research limitations. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons,

Ltd.

Keywords: leadership; mental health; meta-analysis; occupational health; performance

Introduction

Organizational leadership research has traditionally focused on the identification of causal mechanisms linking

leaders’traits and behaviors to an improvement in key organizational performance indicators (e.g., net sales, profit

margins, and return on investment) and/or employee performance or motivation (e.g., organizational commitment,

job satisfaction, employee turnover; cf. Fleishman et al., 1991). Much leadership research has been guided by two

fundamental goals: to develop selection criteria for “effective”leadership personnel and to design training programs

for the improvement of leader performance in organizations (Bass & Bass, 2008; Yukl, 2013). Even large-scale

international studies such as the GLOBE research program have been conducted, in particular, to identify which

specific leader characteristics and behaviors contribute to or impede “effective leadership”(House & Javidan,

2004), and facilitate “successful”managerial leader selection, counseling, and training in multinational

organizations (Dorfman, Hanges, & Brodbeck, 2004). Because of the popularity of this research paradigm,

*Correspondence to: Diego Montano, University of Goettingen, Institute for Medical Psychology and Sociology, Waldweg 37A, 37073

Goettingen, Germany. E-mail: diego.montano@med.uni-goettingen.de

Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Received 21 July 2015

Revised 17 June 2016, Accepted 23 June 2016

Journal of Organizational Behavior, J. Organiz. Behav. 38, 327–350 (2017)

Published online 21 July 2016 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/job.2124

Research Article

leadership theories usually have proposed different mechanisms that may optimize this process and the attainment of

pre-determined organizational goals, without taking into account (1) the potential occupational health risks or ben-

efits associated with leadership (Nyberg, Bernin, & Theorell, 2005) and (2) the association of such health risks and

benefits with performance.

However, the findings of recent reviews indicate that, from an occupational health perspective, leadership is not

a neutral element; it may also be an important determinant of work-related health outcomes in organizations

(Gregersen, Kuhnert, Zimber, & Nienhaus, 2011; Kuoppala, Lamminpaa, Liira, & Vainio, 2008; Nyberg et al.,

2005; Skakon, Nielsen, Borg, & Guzman, 2010). It has been acknowledged, for instance, that the potential effects

of leaders on followers’mental health may result not only from the exposure to positive leadership styles such as

inspiring and motivating leadership (Kuoppala et al., 2008), but also from destructive leadership behaviors such

as aggression and authoritarianism (Schyns & Schilling, 2013; Tepper, 2007). Nonetheless, these reviews within

the leadership literature have several limitations restricting their generalizability concerning their implications for

followers’mental health. (1) They investigate how “effective”a set of leadership behaviors is in enhancing

organization-related outcomes such as job satisfaction, job well-being, job performance, sick leave, disability

pension, employee retention, and work alienation (Kuoppala et al., 2008; Nyberg et al., 2005). Thus, strictly

speaking, they are not focusing on followers’mental health outcomes, but rather on the potential financial

consequences of followers’outcomes for the organization. (2) Three reviews comprise narrative descriptions of

research results, and therefore do not include meta-analytic estimates of associations (Gregersen et al., 2011;

Nyberg et al., 2005; Skakon et al., 2010; Tepper, 2007), which limits the conclusions that can be drawn (for

instance about the extent of concrete health risks due to adverse health consequences, about possible interven-

tions, etc.). (3) The two existing meta-analyses investigate the associations of specific and relatively narrow lead-

ership behaviors (destructive leadership; cf. Schyns & Schilling, 2013), or only of selected leadership styles

(transformational leadership, consideration, and initiating structure; cf. Kuoppala et al., 2008), and, consequently,

do not consider a large body of research conducted on the basis of various leadership concepts and processes such

as emotional and interactional aspects of leadership. Moreover, the scope of mental health outcomes included in

the meta-analysis of Kuoppala et al. (2008) is limited and comprises only well-being and job satisfaction, but

does not consider, for instance, negative health states (e.g., symptoms of burnout, depression, anxiety, etc.). In

addition, the authors do not report how they classified the studies in their different leadership categories. There-

fore, a comprehensive meta-analysis focusing exclusively on specific mental health outcomes, and describing

explicitly how leadership is being conceptualized and categorized in different leadership styles and/or behaviors,

is still missing.

The current state of the literature emphasizes the need for changing the research focus from “effectiveness”of

leadership to a more balanced approach that also includes occupational health implications and, for instance,

allows planning and designing evidence-based occupational health policies and interventions. In fact, mental health

has become one of the major factors determining early retirement, disability benefits, absenteeism levels, and large

societal costs such as productivity losses and medical treatment costs in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation

and Development countries (OECD, 2010). Different psychosocial working conditions seem to be key factors that

increase the probability of disability pension and several mental health outcomes (Samuelsson, Ropponen,

Alexanderson, & Svedberg, 2013; Stansfeld & Candy, 2006). Thus, the focus on the mental health implications

of leadership corresponds to the urgent need of national health systems for identifying the most efficient ways of

reducing the burden of psychosocial risks and, at the same time, enhancing potential resources encountered in the

work environment.

The scarcity of specific studies focusing on the health effects of leadership is partly due to the fact that managers,

organizational psychologists, and industrial engineers have usually been the targeted audience of leadership

research. Hence, the main contribution of the present meta-analysis is to bridge these two research areas, namely,

occupational health and leadership research, by focusing on the mental health of followers given a particular

leadership style, and by studying the mediation of leadership styles on job performance via mental health. In order

to overcome the existing limitations of current leadership research and the previous reviews mentioned earlier, and

328 D. MONTANO ET AL.

Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Organiz. Behav. 38, 327–350 (2017)

DOI: 10.1002/job