Constructive and destructive leadership in job demands-resources theory: A meta-analytic test of the motivational and health-impairment pathways

Integrating the leadership literature with Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) theory, we conducted a pre-registered meta-analysis of the relations of different leadership behaviors with followers' work engagement and burnout. We found that constructive leadership relates positively to followers' work engagement (k = 588, & rho; over bar =.467) and negatively to followers' burnout (k = 346, & rho; over bar =-.327), whereas destructive leadership relates negatively to followers' work engagement (k = 72, & rho; over bar =-.220) and positively to followers' burnout (k = 122, & rho; over bar =.381). We furthermore demonstrated that both followers' work engagement and burnout partially mediate the relations of both constructive and destructive leadership with followers' job performance. However, the indirect relation of constructive leadership with followers' job performance via followers' work engagement is clearly the strongest, suggesting that leaders stimulate followers' job performance primarily because they motivate followers. We discuss how the findings of this theory-driven meta-analysis help to integrate leadership research in JD-R theory and generate important insights for leadership behavior and training. In organizations, leaders can act constructively or destructively toward followers, and that behavior can substantially influence followers' wellbeing. In the current meta-analysis, we combine all prior research about the relations of different constructive and destructive leadership behaviors with followers' work-related wellbeing. Work-related wellbeing was assessed based on how engaged and burned-out followers are at work. Summarizing data from more than 1,000 studies, we find that leaders' constructive behavior relates positively to their followers' engagement at work and negatively to their levels of burnout, whereas the opposite holds true for relations of leaders' destructive behavior. Importantly, followers' work engagement and burnout can also help to explain the well-established relations between leaders' behavior and followers' job performance.