Inclusive leadership and employee work engagement: a moderated mediation model

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between inclusive leadership and employee work engagement by identifying person-job fit as a mediator, and employee felt responsibility as a moderator.

Design/methodology/approach

Employing a two-wave survey from 261 employees across various industries in China, the study tests hypotheses using hierarchical regression analysis with the PROCESS procedure developed by Hayes.

Findings

The results show that inclusive leadership is positively related to employee work engagement through person-job fit. The results further demonstrate that employees’ felt responsibility moderates the positive direct relationship between inclusive leadership and person-job fit as well as the indirect relationship between inclusive leadership and work engagement via person-job fit.

Research limitations/implications

Although two-wave data were used to test the model, issues of common method bias cannot be excluded because the data were collected from a single source (the employee).

Practical implications

Organizations should promote and develop inclusive leaders in the workplace to enhance employee work engagement, and pay attention to employees' felt responsibility for their work to ensure effectiveness of inclusive leadership.

Originality/value

Integrating social information processing theory and person-environment fit theory, this study enriches the theoretical foundation of inclusive leadership scholarship. This study deepens the understanding of the mechanism underlying the link between inclusive leadership and work engagement, as well as an important boundary condition of this relationship, by examining the mediating role of person-job fit and the moderating role of felt responsibility.

Citation

Bao, P., Xiao, Z., Bao, G. and Noorderhaven, N. (2022), "Inclusive leadership and employee work engagement: a moderated mediation model", Baltic Journal of Management, Vol. 17 No. 1, pp. 124-139. https://doi.org/10.1108/BJM-06-2021-0219