The impacts of transformational leadership on emotional labour in Taiwanese private nonprofit long-term care institutions: the mediating role of psychological contract

ABSTRACT

Few studies have empirically tested the argument by psychological contract theory regarding ‘supervisors as the makers of employees’ psychological contracts’. To bridge this gap, this research was conducted on the impact of transformational leadership on relational and transactional psychological contracts, associated the emotional labour coping strategies to develop a research model, and investigated the mediating impacts of relational and transactional psychological contracts to validate the theoretical model. The hypotheses proposed in this study were tested through SEM with AMOS 22.0 software, which was also applied to the data collected from 236 nursing staff in 60 private, nonprofit long-term care institutions in Taiwan. As a result, transformational leadership was proven to have direct and opposite effects on the fulfilment of both relational and transactional psychological contracts. The fulfilment of relational and transactional psychological contracts had direct and opposite effects on deep and surface acting. Following that, the transactional and relational psychological contracts fully and negatively mediated the impacts of transformational leadership and surface acting, while the relational and transactional psychological contracts partially and positively mediated the influences of transformational leadership and deep acting. This study has important managerial implications for human resource management in the long-term care industry and institutions.

KEYWORDS:

• Transformational leadership
• psychological contract
• emotional labour
• nursing staff
• private non-profit long-term care institutions

Acknowledgements

We are thankful to the Editor, Associate Editor and two anonymous reviewers for their supportive comments & suggestions to improve the earlier version of this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Chih-Jou Chen

Chih-Jou Chen is a Professor in the Department of Marketing and Logistics Management at National Penghu University of Science and Technology in Taiwan. He has extensive teaching, training and consulting experience in service innovation management, new product development and supply chain management. His research interests include intelligent agent technologies, market competition and strategy, services marketing and management. He has authored numerous papers and his research has appeared in the Computers in Human Behavior, International Journal of Organizational Analysis, Information and Management, Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of Business and Industrial Marketing, Management Decision, IEEE Access, Asia Pacific Business Review, Sage Open, Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, International Journal of Consumer Studies and conference proceedings.

Pei-Hsuan Tsai

Pei-Hsuan Tsai is an Assistant Professor of Department of Marketing and Logistics Management, National Penghu University of Science and Technology. He received his PhD in Management from the National Taiwan University of Science and Technology (NTUST). He has published 18 papers in international journals including journals such as Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Journal of Policy Modeling, Curator: The Museum Journal, Technological and Economic Development of Economy, IMA Journal of Management Mathematics, European Journal of Operational Research, Service Industries Journal, Journal of Testing and Evaluation, Journal of Social Sciences, and Journal of Information and Optimization Sciences. His main research interests include multiple-attribute decision-making (MADM), performance management, management sciences, and marketing.

Ju-Chuan Wu

Ju-Chuan Wu is an Associate Professor in the Department of Business Administration, Feng Chia University. Her research papers have been published in Industrial Management & Data Systems, Journal of Medical Systems, Information & Management, Journal of Network and Computer Applications, Journal of Business Research, and Journal of e-Business (in Chinese). Her current research interests are in the field of knowledge management and performance measurement, with a special focus on intangible assets, intellectual capital, and knowledge sharing.