Investigating the Impact of Positive Leadership and Identification on Employee Wellbeing

Workplace stress, depression and anxiety has been increasing steadily in recent years and the COVID pandemic has accelerated this growth drastically (Health & Safety Executive, 2020). Consequently, the focus on employee wellbeing in organisations has been increased (CIPD, 2021). One key influencer of employee wellbeing is leadership and specifically, positive leadership (Cameron, 2012; 2013) which has been recently associated with employee wellbeing and mediated by identification variables (Marsh et al., in prep).

This thesis extends on these initial findings by widening the focus of employee wellbeing to include multiple indicators, explores other potential mediating variables and considers other factors which might heighten or dampen the impact of positive leadership on employee wellbeing. Across eight studies (N = 1863), there is clear empirical evidence for the impact of positive leadership on a wide variety of employee wellbeing indicators which incorporate both hedonic and eudemonic indicators and both positive and negative indicators. There is also clear support for the role of identification variables as significant mediators in the relationship between positive leadership and employee wellbeing. Results also showed the potential for perceived organisational support and LMX as mediating mechanisms. There is also evidence from this thesis that positive leadership does show unique effects when taking into account other leadership styles associated with wellbeing. Additionally, positive leaders received better evaluations of their leadership than other leaders and the beneficial impact of positive leaders was not limited by the characteristics of the leader.

Overall, this thesis adds to the literature on positive leadership by examining the why and how this style of leadership has beneficial impacts on employee wellbeing. The thesis concludes with a discussion of the theoretical and applied implications, limitations and future research avenues.