A systematic review and critique of research on “healthy leadership”

By C. Rudolph, L. Murphy, H. Zacher. 2020

107 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract Employee health and wellbeing are important concerns for organizations, and it has long been known that social support from leaders has a salutogenic influence on their followers. Over the past decade, several models of “healthy leadership” have been introduced, with the aim of theoretically integrating leadership research with scholarship on occupational health and wellbeing. We present a systematic review and critique of the literature on these models of “healthy leadership” and associated evidence from empirical studies (k = 35). In addition, we compare various models of “healthy leadership” and critically evaluate evidence for their incremental predictive validity above and beyond established leadership constructs (e.g., individualized consideration). We conclude with a discussion of problems in the “healthy leadership” literature (e.g., construct proliferation, confounding of leader behavior and its desired outcomes) and outline a “new agenda” of prescriptive recommendations for “healthy leadership” theory (re)development, research, and practice.

Subfields: General Health Professions, Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/3caecf28e53cf3e747929f15036319ce46982426

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In General Health Professions

In Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management

Citations in the corpus

Pandemics: Implications for research and practice in industrial and organizational psychology (2020, background): “Finally, research on the notion of “healthy leadership” could explore associations among leaders’ and followers’ health-related attitudes, values, behaviors, and outcomes during a stressful and uncertain time that places various novel demands and constraints upon them, both within and outside of the”
When and how health‐oriented leadership relates to employee well‐being—The role of expectations, self‐care, and LMX (2021, background): “…evidence of the incremental validity of health- oriented leadership beyond closely aligned measures of recognized forms of leadership, such as individual consideration as one aspect of transformational leadership, is important to tease out other leadership influences (e.g., Rudolph et al., 2020).”