How CEOs’ inclusive leadership fuels employees’ well-being: a three-level model

Abstract

Drawing on social learning theory and social information processing theory, we propose that department managers’ inclusive leadership, and department-level inclusive climate serially mediate the effect of CEOs’ inclusive leadership on employees’ well-being. We also posit that organizational structure not only moderates the relationship between CEOs’ inclusive leadership and department managers’ inclusive leadership, but also plays a role in the relationship between department managers’ inclusive leadership and department-level inclusive climate. By analyzing paired data of 106 CEOs, 204 department managers, and 975 employees, we found that department managers’ inclusive leadership mediated the relationship between CEOs’ inclusive leadership and employees’ well-being, but the serial mediation role of department managers’ inclusive leadership and department-level inclusive climate in the effect of CEOs’ inclusive leadership on employees’ well-being was not supported. Organizational structure moderated the relationship between CEOs’ inclusive leadership and department managers’ inclusive leadership. Specifically, when organizations have organic structures rather than mechanistic structures, the relationship between CEOs’ inclusive leadership and department managers’ inclusive leadership is stronger. However, the moderating role of organizational structure in the relationship between department managers’ inclusive leadership and inclusive department climate was not supported.

Keywords:

• Inclusive leadership
• inclusive climate
• organizational structure
• well-being

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Data availability statement

Due to the nature of this research, participants of this study did not agree for their data to be shared publicly, so supporting data is not available.

Funding

This study was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 71832007,72072081, 71802106, 71862019, 71872041, 71472036), the Major Project of Social Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (No. 22ZDA002), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (No. 2242022R20051), Jiangsu Planned Projects for Postdoctoral Research Funds (No.2021K609C).