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‘Killing me softly with his/her song’: How leaders dismantle followers’ sense of work meaningfulness
Journal
Frontiers in psychology
ISSN-Digital
1664-1078
Type
journal article
Date Issued
2018-05-09
Author(s)
Kark, Ronit
Abstract
Leaders influence followers’ meaning and play a key role in shaping their employees’ experience of work meaningfulness. While the dominant perspective in theory and in empirical work focuses on the positive influence of leaders on followers’ work meaningfulness, our conceptual model explores conditions in which leaders may harm followers’ sense of meaning. We introduce six types of conditions, i.e. leaders’ personality traits, leaders’ behaviors, the relationship between leader and follower, followers’ attributions, followers’ characteristics, and job design under which leaders’ meaning making efforts might harm or ‘kill’ followers’ sense of work meaningfulness. Accordingly, we explore how these conditions may interact with leaders’ meaning making efforts to lower levels of followers’ sense of meaning, and in turn, lead to negative personal outcomes (i.e., cynicism, lower well-being, and disengagement), as well as negative organizational outcomes (i.e., corrosive organizational energy, higher turnover rates, and lower organizational productivity). By doing so, our research extends the current literature, enabling a more comprehensive understanding of leaders’ influence on followers’ work meaningfulness, while considering the dark side of meaning making.
Language
English
Keywords
Work meaningfulness
meaning making
Leadership
followership
Dark triad
HSG Classification
contribution to scientific community
Refereed
Yes
Publisher
Frontiers Research Foundation
Publisher place
Lausanne
Subject(s)
Division(s)
Eprints ID
254135