How and When Health-Promoting Leadership Facilitates Employee Health Status: The Critical Role of Healthy Climate and Work Unit Structure

Shuang Liu; Zhimin Song; Jincen Xiao; Peimin Chen

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.727887

How and When Health-Promoting Leadership Facilitates Employee Health Status: The Critical Role of Healthy Climate and Work Unit Structure

Front Psychol. 2021 Dec 24:12:727887. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.727887. eCollection 2021.

Authors

Shuang Liu¹, Zhimin Song², Jincen Xiao³, Peimin Chen⁴

Affiliations

¹ School of Business Administration, Hebei University of Economics and Business, Shijiazhuang, China.
² School of Business Administration, Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, Chengdu, China.
³ School of Management, Xihua University, Chengdu, China.
⁴ School of Hotel Administration, Shanghai Business School, Shanghai, China.

Abstract

Health-promoting leadership has attracted a lot of attention from scholars in recent years. However, majority studies focused on theoretical arguments rather than empirical examination. Not only that, extant research often theorizes health-promoting leadership as a combination of a series of direct and explicit health-related behaviors, neglecting the potential social information it may convey to employees. Based on social information processing theory, this study empirically examines how and when health-promoting leadership can facilitate employees' health status. Using a time-lagged data of 370 employees (i.e., matched to 51 leaders), we found that health-promoting leadership has a significant and positive influence on employees' health status, and healthy climate acts as a linking pin. In addition, work unit structure moderates the relationship between health-promoting leadership and healthy climate. Specifically, compared with mechanic work unite structure, employees rely more on social information conveyed by health-promoting leadership when working at an organic work unite structure. This study not only extends current knowledge about the effect of health-promoting leadership, but also provides useful guidance for practitioners.

Keywords: employee health status; health-promoting leadership; healthy climate; social information processing theory; work unit structure.