The contagious leader: a panel study on occupational stress transfer in a large Danish municipality.

Occupational stress has immense economic and health-related consequences for individuals, organizations, and societies. In this context, the question of whether and how stress among managers transmits to their subordinates is highly interesting, yet not profoundly researched. This study aims to empirically investigate the effect of manager occupational stress on the development of subordinate stress and for how long such effects last in time. We exploit a unique panel dataset based on three different surveys among employees from a large Danish municipality, covering 5,688 employees and their 473 immediate managers between 2016 and 2020. We analyze this data using a fixed effects estimator with clustered robust standard errors, allowing us to significantly reduce potential endogeneity issues. The study shows that managers do in fact 'transmit' stress onto their employees, that the relationship is detectable a full year after the initial transmission of stress occurred, and that such an effect fades within additional two years. Our study serves to emphasize the great importance of the psychosocial wellbeing of managers as 'nerve centers' for entire job teams and urges organizations to treat stress among personnel on management levels with a high degree of concern.

Can high workplace social capital buffer the negative effect of high workload on patient-initiated violence? Prospective cohort study.

BACKGROUND: High workload seems to increase the risk of patient-initiated workplace violence (patient-initiated violence). However, the temporal association between workload and violence remains uncertain. Understanding the interplay of factors in the psychosocial working environment and patient-initiated violence is important to future preventive initiatives. AIM: To assess whether a high workload increases the risk of patient-initiated violence, and whether intraorganizational relationships based on trust, reciprocity, justice and collaboration, known as workplace social capital, moderate this risk. METHOD: Baseline survey data on 1823 social educators was collected followed by 12 monthly surveys on patient-initiated violence exposure. Poisson regressions, in mixed models, were conducted to assess the risk of violence at four levels of workload. Further, moderation analyses were conducted to assess the moderating effects of three sub-types of workplace social capital. RESULTS: High and very high workload increased the risk of patient-initiated violence: RR = 1.5 [1.4-1.6], p < .001 and RR = 1.4 [1.3-1.4], p < .001. All three levels of workplace social capital had a moderating effect on the workload-violence association: Workload*Workplace social capital(co-worker): F (3, 16,712) = 3.4, p = .017, Workload*Workplace social capital(local management): F (3, 16,748) = 11.9, p < .001, Workload*Workplace social capital(general management): F (3, 16,556) = 5.5, p < .001. Only high Workplace social capital (co-workers) reduced the risk of violence at all levels of workload. Workplace social capital (general management) reduced the risk of violence at high, medium and low workload, and Workplace social capital (local management) reduced the risk of violence at medium and low workload. CONCLUSION: High workload clearly increases the risk of patient-initiated violence. A high workplace social capital appears to be a viable protective factor and should be investigated further in studies of patient-initiated violence prevention.

Public managers' role in creating workplace social capital (WSC) and its effect on employees' well-being and health: a protocol of a longitudinal cohort study (PUMA-WSC).

INTRODUCTION: Workplace social capital (WSC) has been shown to affect employees' well-being and health, yet it is not clear how public managers can create WSC and which forms of WSC are most important. This study is the first prospective cohort study to examine the relationship between management behaviour, WSC, well-being and sickness absence. It uses a validated and detailed scale on WSC, which can distinguish between bonding, bridging, linking and organisational WSC over time. The study thereby provides rich data giving a much-needed detailed image of how WSC impacts on public employees' well-being and health. Additionally, the study pays special attention to the fact that these relationships can be different for different types of employees and therefore tests a set of relevant employee and context-related variables. METHODS AND ANALYSIS: Project preparations in terms of agreements and data preparation of existing data started in 2019. This prospective cohort study considers and collects organisational data from 2016 to 2025. Annual employee surveys of more than 8000 employees (in a large Danish municipality) will be combined with register data in all years. This generates a unique cohort of public employees in different professions that are traceable over several years. The annual surveys include information on the management behaviour, WSC and employee outcomes. Fine-grained information on sickness absences will be matched for all employees and years under study. Moreover, confounders and the nested nature of the data will be considered. ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: Approval has been obtained from The Regional Committee on Health Research Ethics from Southern Denmark and from the University of Southern Denmark. The results will be presented at conferences and published in international peer-reviewed journals and in a practice-oriented monography targeted at public managers. The result will furthermore be disseminated to the involved employees through seminars and workshops in the participating organisations.