Leadership Styles : Moderating Impact on Job Stress and Health

The employees of the millennium appear to be more insecure, experience greater uncertainties and perceive work situations as more risky and threatening. At the same time, they are required to be rather more creative, innovative, flexible and teamorientated to accept business challenges and to do more with fewer resources. Consequently, stress appears to be increasing and emerges as one of the most pervasive Abstract


Introduction
The employees of the millennium appear to be more insecure, experience greater uncertainties and perceive work situations as more risky and threatening.At the same Literature identifies six basic environmental factors including demand, control, support, and relationship at work, roles and organizational change to have a potential impact on employees' well-being, ultimately leading to poor organizational outcomes (Mackay et al. 2004).Among these, role stressors are identified as common sources of work stress in the literature (Hill, Chênevert & Poitras, 2015).Keeping in view the empirical, academic, theoretical and practical importance, the present study has focused on three important types of role stressors as explanatory variables; i.e. role ambiguity, role conflict and role overload.
Since the pioneering work of Kahn et al (1964)  Consequent upon these reviews, the main focus of the present study is to examine the moderating role of transformational and laissez-faire leadership styles between role stressors and health outcome relationship.

Literature Review
Occupational stress encompasses the stress experienced at one's place of work, occupation or employment.The literature identified several sources of occupational stress e.g., task-based stress, role-based stress, environmental stress and social stress (Dollard, 2003).According to a comprehensive definition, work stress is harmful physical and emotional responses that occur when the requirements of the job do not match the capabilities, resources or needs of the worker.Suppressing feelings of stress and anger result in guilt, petulance and depression (Yamaguchi et al. 2017).

Role Stressors
Environmental stressors, regardless of the type or size of organization, include demands, control, support, work relationships, roles and organizational change.The studies have identified mainly the role ambiguity, conflict and overload that have potential for a negative impact on employee well-being (Mackay et al. 2004).Stress has been found to be associated with physical health (Yamaguchi et al. 2017

Leadership
Leadership encompasses everything from the first-level supervisor effects on subordinates' attitudes to the effects of CEOs on organizational performance; from the attribution processes to characterize leaders to the engagement of leaders' specific activities; and from the characteristics of people who emerge as leaders to the effects of actual leaders themselves (Judge et al. 2002;Ding et al. 2017).The ability to influence others is also a defining feature of leadership.
Leadership styles are relatively stable patterns of behavior displayed by leaders.After establishing the transactionaltransformational leadership paradigm, a more comprehensive leadership theory called the 'Full-Range Leadership Theory' (FRLT) was proposed by Avolio and Bass (1991).In the model, it is argued that other leadership models exhibit two-dimensional models of leaders' behavior, whereas, FRLT covers leadership styles more comprehensively by subsuming prior prominent models (Cai, Jia & Li, 2016).

Transformational Leadership
Transformational leaders are proactive, inspire and motivate followers to achieve higher order goals, by influencing values, beliefs, attitudes and behaviors of followers (Giddens, 2017).Avolio

Laissez-Faire Leadership
Laissez-faire leadership represents the absence of a transaction of sorts with respect to leadership in which the leader avoids making decisions, abdicates responsibility and does not use the authority.As the French phrase implies, the laissez-faire leader takes a 'hands-off, let-things-ride' approach (Tarsik, Kassim & Nasharuddin, 2014).In its more passive form, the leader either waits for problems to arise before taking action or takes no action at all and would be labeled passive-avoidant or laissez-faire.Such passive leaders avoid specifying agreements, clarifying expectations, goals and standards to be achieved by followers.Laissez-faire has been associated with negative outcomes like stress and demotivation (Yang, 2015).
Leadership has been consistently linked to a number of positive outcomes across cultural contexts and populations (Ding et al. 2017).However, few studies have considered the extent of the impact on negative organizational consequences (Zohar, 2002;Jyoti & Bhau, 2016).

Health
According to medical experts there is a very strong link between stress and a person's health.Stress is described as a silent killer; because stress plays a major role in determining the physical and psychological health of an individual.Stress and depression are considered to be a serious public health problem as infectious diseases and AIDS (Eddy et al. 2017).
Higher level of stress is a major risk factor for poor health (Yamaguchi et  Supervisor behavior is perceived by many employees to have a significant influence on their health.Supervisor's support has a beneficial effect on worker performance and well-being and in some conceptualizations is seen to buffer the effects of stress on illhealth (Gilbreath & Benson, 2004).Transformational leaders stimulate subordinates to deal with complex problems (Jyoti & Bhau, 2016).
Leadership has been studied in direct relation to health (Kivimaki, et al. 2003)  The employees perceiving a higher level of role stressors will exhibit poor health.

H-2:
Transformational leadership perception has a positive impact on health whereas, laissez-faire has a negative impact.
H-3: Transformational leadership perception will have a positive moderating effect on the relationship between role stressors and health.
H-4: Laissez-faire leadership perception will have a negative moderating effect on employees' reported role stressors and health relationship.

Measures
A structured questionnaire containing Role Stressor Inventory (RSI) adopted from Pareek (1983) was used to measure role stressors i.e. role ambiguity, role conflict and role overload rated on a five-point Likerttype scale (1=Never to 5=Always).The alpha coefficient value of role stressors was 0.85.
The concept of health was measured by the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ), by Goldberg (1978).This is four-point response scale ranging from 1-4, with "Never" to "Very Frequently" responses respectively.The higher scores on this scale show poor health status, while lower scores show good health.The alpha coefficient value of health was 0.90.
The short form leadership questionnaire, Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) by Bass and Avolio (1995) measured the transformational and laissez-faire leadership styles.Alpha reliability coefficients of transformational and laissez-faire leadership styles in the study were .92and .88respectively.

Sample
Keeping in view the importance and relevancy of the issue, the population selected in the present study was medical doctors.A sample of 240 doctors including 88 males (37 %) and 152 females (63 %), in different specialties of public sector hospitals of Islamabad and Rawalpindi, Pakistan, were selected, based on a simple random sampling design.

Procedure
The respondents were approached through the relevant administration.The purpose of the study was explained and the confidentiality of responses for individuals and the organizations were ensured.A total of 300 questionnaires were administered and 240 questionnaires completed in all respects were returned with 80 % response rate.

Data Analysis
Multiple regressions analysis was applied to find out the impact of role stressors and leadership styles on health of individuals.Consistent with Eddy et al. (2017) a hierarchical multiple regression analysis was used to test the hypothesized moderating effects determining the additional variance i.e., beyond main effect, accounted for, by a leadership style.The change in R 2 (∆R 2 ) after the inclusion of the additional variable (interaction term) explains additional variance in the dependent variable.The presence of a moderating effect is shown by a corresponding change in F with degree of freedom at the specified p value.

Discussion
In the first hypothesis it was posited that employees perceiving higher level of role stressors would exhibit poor health.The results show that 48% of variance is explained by role stressors in health.The hypothesis is partially supported as, out of three role stressors, role conflict and ambiguity show a highly significant effect, while, role overload does not reveal significant impact.Transformational leadership is positively associated with work engagement and has a non-positive impact on negative consequences at workplace (Ding et al 2017).The findings are also in line with previous empirical studies by Eddy et al. (2017) showing that workplace stress is associated with increased risk of cardio vascular diseases and other health issues.
The second hypothesis anticipated that perception of transformational leadership style would have an ameliorating impact on physical and mental health, whereas perception of a laissez-faire style would have a deteriorating impact on health.In Table 2, the value of ∆R 2 = .30,explained 30 % of variance by leadership styles in health (F = 34.81,p<.001).
The hypothesis is substantiated as transformational style shows a significant negative impact on the score or improvement in the health status, while laissez-faire style, on the other hand, shows a positive beta value, indicating that laissez-faire style has a deteriorating influence on the health status.The hypothesized moderating role of transformational leadership is explained by the fact that supervisors who were perceived to frequently engage in positive behaviors reported better somatic and psychological health (Gilbreath & Benson, 2004).The findings are also in line with previous research, showing that stress due to poor supervision (laissez-faire) manifests poor health outcomes and more health related problems (Skogstad, Einarsen, Torsheim, Aasland & Hetland, 2007).
The endeavor would be useful, theoretically and practically, to both academia and practitioners.The study expands and advances conceptual knowledge on Bass Model of leadership, integrating leadership and occupational stress literature.The previous research mainly focused on direct relationship of job stress and outcomes, ignoring the impact of moderators.The current research enhances clarity and compensates the methodological flaws in stress and outcomes research.Additionally, the results also provide insight and awareness to management in policy making and to design training programs with reference to leadership, stress and employees' health.

Theoretical and Practical Implications
Role conflict and role ambiguity lead to poor health.Victims of role stressors will exhibit poor overall health.Managers, supervisors and other individuals in leadership roles should adopt transformational leadership style as it will improve the mental and physical health of subordinates in comparison to Laissez-faire style that has a detrimental effect on health.
To improve the health score of individuals at workplace, transformational leadership is the preferred style.Transformational leadership style will help to reduce the negative impact of role stressors, i.e., role conflict and role ambiguity on general health conditions of employees, whereas in case of Laisezz-faire style, impact would be the opposite and deteriorating.
It further suggests that work load, time pressure, lack of responsibility and deadlines do not negatively affect health and do not lead to burnout.However, lack of information about what and how to perform and contradictory expectations from an individual are one of the causes of poor health.

Limitations and Future Research
Though, current study contributes to basic knowledge of stress, leadership and health, still few limitations were there, suggesting future research areas.Leadership and stress being the universal phenomena, the validation of the current findings may be sought by examining employees from other professionals, culturally diverse organizations and a cross-cultural replication of the current study.The study relied solely on subordinates' selfreported measures of variables.The ratings from a single subordinate in some cases may not be the best judges of supervisors' (2018), Journal of Human Resources Management Research, DOI: 10.5171/2018.322892phenomena, adversely affecting the people.Stress has become a major concern not only to the individuals, but also to the organizations (Yamaguchi, Kim, Oshio & Akutsu, 2017; Eddy, Wertheim, Kingsley & Wright, 2017).
(2018), Journal of Human Resources Management Research, DOI: 10.5171/2018.322892 also has been examined being moderated by job enrichment, goal setting and the job characteristics, work engagement, turnover intention (Whittington Goodwin & Murray 2004, Ding et al. 2017).