Abstract
Existing research suggests that empowering leadership enhances employee well-being, but context-specific empirical studies in the public sector remain scarce. We investigated whether this positive impact persists during a public health crisis. To test this, we conducted a natural experiment, utilizing a longitudinal survey of healthcare employees and administrative data on geographical variance in hospitalization rates during a public health crisis. Our findings show that empowering leadership is less effective during a crisis and can even result in adverse effects. The results challenge the notion that empowering leadership universally benefits employee well-being and highlight its potential dark side.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Journal | Public Management Review |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | E-pub ahead of print - 4 Feb 2025 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2025 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
Funding
This research was funded by IZZ, a healthcare employee collective in the Netherlands. Except for the cooperation with IZZ on collecting the data, the funders had no role in the research.
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| IZZ |
Keywords
- COVID-19
- crisis
- employee well-being
- empowering leadership
- natural experiment
