No leader is an island: contextual antecedents to line managers' constructive and destructive leadership during an organizational intervention

• Pages: 173-188
• Date: 06 April 2020
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/IJWHM-05-2019-0065
• Published date: 06 April 2020
• Author: Robert Lundmark,Karina Nielsen,Henna Hasson,Ulrica von Thiele Schwarz,Susanne Tafvelin
• Subject Matter: Health & social care,Healthcare management,HR & organizational behaviour,Human resource policy,Employee welfare

No leader is an island: contextual

antecedents to line managers’

constructive and destructive

leadership during an

organizational intervention

Robert Lundmark

Department of Psychology, Ume



a University, Ume



a, Sweden and

LIME, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden

Karina Nielsen

Institute of Work Psychology, The University of Sheffield Management School,

Sheffield, UK

Henna Hasson

LIME, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden

Ulrica von Thiele Schwarz

School of Health, Care and Social welfare, M€

alardalen University,

V€

aster



as, Sweden and

LIME, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden, and

Susanne Tafvelin

Department of Psychology, Ume



a University, Ume



a, Sweden

Abstract

Purpose –Line managers can make or break organizational interventions, yet little is known about what

makes them turn in either direction. As leadership does not occur in a vacuum, it has been suggested that the

organizational context plays an important role. Building on the intervention and leadership literature, we

examine if span of control and employee readiness for change are related to line managers’leadership during an

organizational intervention.

Design/methodology/approach –Leadership is studied in terms of intervention-specific constructive, as

well as passive and active formsof destructive, leadership behaviors. As a sample, we use employees (N5172)

from 37 groups working at a process industry plant. Multilevel analyses over two time points, with both survey

and organizational register data were used to analyze the data.

Findings –The results revealed that span of control was negatively related to constructive leadership and

positively related to passive destructive leadership during the intervention. Employee readiness for change

was positively related to constructive leadership, and negatively related to both passive and active destructive

leadership.

Practical implications –Our findings suggest that contextual factors need to be assessed and

considered if we want line managers to engage in constructive rather than destructive leadership during

interventions.

Contextual

antecedents to

leadership

173

The authors would like to thank the organization and the employees who participated in the study. We

are also grateful to the consutants Mikal Bj€

orkst€

om and Maria Eliasson for helping us with the data

collection. This work was supported by the Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and

Welfare (FORTE) [grant 2012-0215] and the Karolinska Institutet Board of Doctoral Education [KID

funding 3-1818/2013].

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:

https://www.emerald.com/insight/1753-8351.htm

Received 10 May 2019

Revised 12 September 2019

Accepted 17 February 2020

InternationalJournal of Workplace

Health Management

Vol. 13 No. 2, 2020

pp. 173-188

© Emerald Publishing Limited

1753-8351

DOI 10.1108/IJWHM-05-2019-0065

Originality/value –The present study is the first to address line managers’making or breaking of

organizational interventions by examining the influence of context on both their destructive and constructive

leadership.

Keywords Leadership, Span of control, Readiness for change, Organizational intervention, Contextual

antecedents

Paper type Research paper

Introduction

Line managers play a key role when it comes to managing organizational interventions

(i.e. interventions that aim to change the way work is organized, designed and managed to

improve employee health and well-being; Nielsen et al., 2010). They function as the

communication link between senior management and employees and are therefore vital for

sharing information about the intervention in both directions. They are also often responsible

for translating the planned intervention into concrete changes to working practices and

procedures. Furthermore, they manage employee expectations and questions about the

intervention and make everyday decisions on the prioritization of intervention activities in

relation to managing everyday operations (Nielsen, 2017). Consequently, line managers may

either make or break organizational interventions (Nielsen, 2017;Nytrø et al., 2000). The

intervention literature includes several examples of line managers hindering or facilitating

the implementation of interventions (Nielsen, 2013). However, what makes line managers turn

in either direction has so far received little attention (Nielsen, 2017).

Reviewing the literature, Nielsen (2017) concluded that besides personal resources and

attitudes towards change among line managers, contextual factors may play an important

role for how leader enact leadership during interventions. Therefore, if we are to gain a better

understanding of what conditions are needed for line managers to engage in making

organizational interventions achieve their intended outcomes, researching contextual

prerequisites to their behaviors is crucial.

Each organization has its specific setting and history and the context in which the

organizational intervention take place needs to be understood (Johns, 2006). In organizations,

context provides constraints and opportunities that influence organizational members’

behaviors (Johns, 2006). For organizational changes to occur, there needs to be an enabling

context that offers opportunities and support for the adaption of new behaviors (Johns, 2006).

Thus, without understanding how contextual factors influence both line managers’and

employees’behaviors, the impact of an intervention risks being minimal or even negative

(Nytrø, et al., 2000). For example, the supportive behaviors of line managers during

interventions have been suggested to depend on the level of support they received from both

senior management and employees (Nielsen et al., 2010).

The aim of the present study is to evaluate the impact of two contextual antecedents, span

of control (i.e. the number of employees organized directly under a manager and reporting to

him/her, Schyns et al., 2010) and employees’readiness for change (i.e. the perceived benefit of-,

ability to-, and need for executing the planned change, Armenakis et al., 1993), on line

managers’constructive and destructive leadership behaviors during the implementation of

an organizational intervention.

The contributions of our study are twofold. First, we examine the prospective relationship

between two discrete contextual antecedents and leadership during the implementation of an

organizational intervention. We use survey data from two time points together with register

data provided from the organization’s HR department. The two antecedents deal with

different aspects of context but have both been suggested to affect leadership during

interventions (Ipsen et al., 2015;Nielsen, 2017). We believe that these variables may be crucial

for the creation of good conditions for organizational interventions. Successful

implementation of organizational interventions is highly dependent on employees’active

IJWHM

13,2

174