How empowering leadership influences medical workers' work–family conflict in the post-pandemic era: A moderated mediation model of leadership “black box”

Abstract

After experiencing the COVID-19 pandemic, the status and mechanisms of leadership, and the challenges for medical workers in terms of family–work conflicts, have caused widespread concern. In the post-pandemic era, based on role theory and the stressor-detachment model, this paper seeks to break the “black box” of negative effects that can be caused by leadership, research the mechanism and boundary conditions of those negative effects, and explore factors to reduce those negative effects. We recruited 1,010 Chinese medical workers fighting COVID-19 on the frontline. Our study results showed that there was a significant negative correlation between empowering leadership and work–family conflict, and this relationship was completely mediated by role stress, while psychological detachment moderated the relationship between role stress and work–family conflict. Moreover, psychological detachment moderated the mediating effect of empowering leadership on work–family conflict through role stress. Therefore, higher levels of psychological detachment were less conducive to medical workers' family–work conflict. This study has important theoretical significance and practical value for revealing the negative effects and mechanisms of empowering leadership and for medical workers to better deal with work–family relations.