Leadership styles in work contexts play a role in employees' well-being, contributing to better health or, on the contrary, being a source of stress. In this study we propose that security providing leadership may be considered as a resource to prevent employees' job burnout. First, we examine the relationship between employees' perception of their leader's degree of security in providing leadership and the employees' degree of job-related burnout. Second, the underlying processes by which leaders as security providers exert their influence on burnout are analyzed with a focus on the mediating role of two variables: an organizational climate oriented to psychological safety and organizational dehumanization. A total of 655 Spanish employees (53.7% women) completed a paper-and-pencil self-report questionnaire. To recruit participants, we employed an exponential non-discriminative snowball sampling. Results, using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) to test hypotheses, show that security providing leadership was related negatively to burnout. Furthermore, psychological safety climate and organizational dehumanization mediated the relationship between security providing leadership and burnout. These findings support the attachment approach to leadership and open new avenues for creating better organizational environments. Security-providing leaders, by supporting employees and treating them in a personalized way, can enhance the psychological safety climate and prevent organizational dehumanization and consequent job burnout.
Keywords: attachment theory; burnout; leadership; organizational climate; organizational dehumanization; security provider.