Servant Leadership in the Healthcare Literature: A Systematic Review.

Servant leadership has received a growing consideration among scholars and practitioners as a viable leadership model capable of bringing positive changes in the increasingly complex healthcare system. The increasing servant leadership literature in healthcare requires an integrated research work that provides a holistic picture of the existing studies. This systematic review aims to synthesize servant leadership conceptualizations, theoretical frameworks, measurement tools, and nomological networks (antecedents, mediators, outcomes, and moderators) associated with prior research in healthcare. A systematic synthesis of 55 pertinent healthcare-specific conceptual and empirical studies demonstrated that servant leadership assumes a crucial role in developing a committed workforce that contributes towards the achievement of performance excellence in healthcare. The review uncovers that the Global Servant Leadership Scale is the most utilized measure of servant leadership in sector-specific studies in healthcare. Moreover, social exchange theory is the dominant underpinning mechanism explaining the influence of servant leadership on specific variables of interest. The findings further revealed that servant leadership has a positive relationship with a range of valued individual and organizational outcomes in healthcare. Our review contributes to the development of servant leadership theory and practice through ascertaining sector-specific studies in the territory of healthcare. We finally conclude by providing a detailed panorama for future healthcare-specific servant leadership research in terms of potential topics, methodological rigor, and less explored variables in prior studies.

Humane orientation, work-family conflict, and positive spillover across cultures.

Although cross-national work-family research has made great strides in recent decades, knowledge accumulation on the impact of culture on the work-family interface has been hampered by a limited geographical and cultural scope that has excluded countries where cultural expectations regarding work, family, and support may differ. We advance this literature by investigating work-family relationships in a broad range of cultures, including understudied regions of the world (i.e., Sub-Saharan Africa, Southern Asia). We focus on humane orientation (HO), an overlooked cultural dimension that is however central to the study of social support and higher in those regions. We explore its moderating effect on relationships between work and family social support, work-family conflict, and work-family positive spillover. Building on the congruence and compensation perspectives of fit theory, we test alternative hypotheses on a sample of 10,307 participants from 30 countries/territories. We find HO has mostly a compensatory role in the relationships between workplace support and work-to-family conflict. Specifically, supervisor and coworker supports were most strongly and negatively related to conflict in cultures in which support is most needed (i.e., lower HO cultures). Regarding positive spillover, HO has mostly an amplifying role. Coworker (but not supervisor) support was most strongly and positively related to work-to-family positive spillover in higher HO cultures, where providing social support at work is consistent with the societal practice of providing support to one another. Likewise, instrumental (but not emotional) family support was most strongly and positively related to family-to-work positive spillover in higher HO cultures. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Perceived Covid-19-crisis intensity and family supportive organizational perceptions as antecedents of parental burnout: A study conducted in Italy in March/April 2021 and 2022.

The purpose of this study is to investigate to what extent perceived Covid-19-crisis intensity (PCCI) leads to the experience of parental burnout (PB), a syndrome characterized by exhaustion, emotional detachment from one's own children and a sense of inefficacy in the role as parent. Furthermore, the mediating role of work-family conflict (WFC) is examined. The buffering effect of family supportive organizational perceptions during the pandemic (FSOP-p) on the relationship between work-family conflict and parental burnout is also explored. Data were collected in March-April 2021 and March/April 2022. In spring 2021, 222 Italian working parents with at least one minor child living at home filled out the questionnaire. Data from 2021 showed that PCCI was positively related to the experience of parental burnout. Moreover, WFC mediated this relationship. No significant interaction effect was found for FSOP-p; however it was found that FSOP-p is negatively related to PCCI and WFC, and indirectly to parental burnout. In spring 2022, we examined whether there were changes in PCCI, WFC, and FSOP-p in a sample of 83 Italian parents. Moreover, for the second data collection we examine the tensions experienced by parents in their families about vaccination and infection precaution measures (e.g., Covid-19 vaccination passport). The results are different in 2022; the effect of PCCI on parental burnout is now completely mediated by the amount of WFC. It seems that now we go 'back to normal' and homeworking has become more optional for many, there is still an effect of PCCI on WFC, but no longer directly on parental burnout. Furthermore, the prevalence of PCCI in 2022 is lower than in 2021, while WFC and FSOP-p are not significantly different between the two timepoints. As family supportive organizational perceptions reduce the level of perceived Covid-19 intensity, organizations are urged to develop practices of support and to create a supportive environment.

The Flywheel Effect of Gender Role Expectations in Diverse Work Groups.

Popular press suggests that gender diversity benefits the performance of work groups. However, decades of research indicate that such performance benefits of gender diversity are anything but a given. To account for this incongruity, in this conceptual paper we argue that the performance of gender-diverse work groups is often inhibited by self-reinforcing gender role expectations. We use the analogy of a flywheel to illustrate how gender role expectations tend to reinforce themselves via three mechanisms. Specifically, we argue that gender role expectations shape (1) the allocation of jobs, tasks, and responsibilities, (2) the behavior of perceivers, and (3) the behavior of target women and men. In turn, these three consequences of gender role expectations tend to confirm the initial gender role expectations, thus creating an automatic, self-reinforcing flywheel effect. Such self-reinforcing gender role expectations provide superficial impressions of individual women's and men's actual knowledge and abilities at best. We therefore further propose that each of the three mechanisms of the flywheel of gender role expectations negatively affects group performance to the extent that gender role expectations inaccurately capture group members' actual knowledge and abilities. Because the extent to which work group members rely on gender role expectations depends on how they form impressions of others, we propose that individuals' motivation to form accurate impressions is crucial for inhibiting the flywheel of gender role expectations. We close by advancing an agenda for future research on each of the three areas of interest in our conceptual analysis: the flywheel effect of gender role expectations, the consequences of this flywheel effect for group functioning, and ways to motivate group members to form accurate impressions.

Validity of the Parental Burnout Inventory Among Dutch Employees.

The purpose of this study was to validate the Parental Burnout Inventory (PBI) in a Dutch sample of working parents. The Dutch version of the PBI and questionnaires about work were administered to 627 working parents, with at least one child living at home. We investigated whether the tri-dimensional structure of the PBI held in a sample of male and female employed parents. Furthermore, we examined the relationships between PBI and the constructs work-related burnout, depressive mood, parenting stress and work-family conflict, which we assessed with widely used and validated instruments, i.e., emotional exhaustion [a subscale of the Dutch version of Maslach's Burnout Inventory], a Dutch Parental Stress Questionnaire and Work-Family Conflict. The results support the validity of a tri-dimensional parental burnout syndrome, including exhaustion, distancing and inefficacy. Low to moderate correlations between parents' burnout symptoms and professional exhaustion, parenting stress, depressive complaints and work-family conflict experiences were found, suggesting that the concept of PBI differs significantly from the concepts of job burnout, depression and stress, respectively. The current study confirms that some parents are extremely exhausted by their parental role. However, the number of Dutch employees reporting extreme parental burnout is rather low.

Transformational, transactional, and laissez-faire leadership styles: a meta-analysis comparing women and men.

A meta-analysis of 45 studies of transformational, transactional, and laissez-faire leadership styles found that female leaders were more transformational than male leaders and also engaged in more of the contingent reward behaviors that are a component of transactional leadership. Male leaders were generally more likely to manifest the other aspects of transactional leadership (active and passive management by exception) and laissez-faire leadership. Although these differences between male and female leaders were small, the implications of these findings are encouraging for female leadership because other research has established that all of the aspects of leadership style on which women exceeded men relate positively to leaders' effectiveness whereas all of the aspects on which men exceeded women have negative or null relations to effectiveness.

Sex and leadership styles: a meta-analysis of research published in the 1990s.

Empirical research on sex differences in leadership styles, published between 1987 and 2000 in peer-reviewed journals, is reviewed by means of a meta-analysis. The leadership styles examined are interpersonal, task-oriented, democratic versus autocratic, and transformational and transactional leadership. Analysis showed that evidence for sex differences in leadership behavior is mixed, demonstrating that women tend to use more democratic and transformational leadership styles than men do, whereas no sex differences are found on the other leadership styles. Sex differences in leadership styles are contingent upon the context in which male and female leaders work, as both the type of organization in which the leader works and the setting of the study turn out to be moderators of sex differences in leadership styles.

Commitment of Cultural Minorities in Organizations: Effects of Leadership and Pressure to Conform.

PURPOSE: In this study, we investigated the commitment of cultural minorities and majorities in organizations. We examined how contextual factors, such as pressure to conform and leadership styles, affect the commitment of minority and majority members. DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH: A field study was conducted on 107 employees in a large multinational corporation. FINDINGS: We hypothesize and found that cultural minorities felt more committed to the organization than majority members, thereby challenging the existing theoretical view that cultural minorities will feel less committed. We also found that organizational pressure to conform and effective leadership increased the commitment of minorities. IMPLICATIONS: Our findings indicate that organizational leaders and researchers should not only focus on increasing and maintaining the commitment of minority members, but should also consider how majority members react to cultural socialization and integration processes. The commitment of minority members can be further enhanced by effective leadership. ORIGINALITY/VALUE: In this study, we challenge the existing theoretical view based on similarity attraction theory and relational demography theory, that cultural minorities would feel less committed to the organization. Past research has mainly focused on minority groups, thereby ignoring the reaction of the majority to socialization processes. In this study, we show that cultural minorities can be more committed than majority members in organizations. Therefore, the perceptions of cultural majority members of socialization processes should also be considered in research on cultural diversity and acculturation.