Blessing or curse? A multilevel investigation of the benefits and costs of temporal leadership on employee proactive behavior

Abstract

Purpose

Prior research has demonstrated that temporal leadership brings benefits, whereas scholars know little about its potential drawbacks. This study aims to explore the positive and negative effects of temporal leadership.

Design/methodology/approach

A three-wave, multi-source survey was conducted to examine the theoretical model and test hypotheses. Multi-level analysis was performed using Mplus 7.4 and the R package for Monte Carlo simulations.

Findings

This study reveals that temporal leadership both decreases employee proactive behavior through emotional exhaustion and increases it through job absorption. Shared temporal cognitions buffer the effect of temporal leadership on emotional exhaustion and its indirect effect on proactive behavior through emotional exhaustion. Conversely, shared temporal cognitions strengthen the effect of temporal leadership on job absorption and its indirect effect on proactive behavior through job absorption.

Practical implications

Our findings show that temporal leadership has costs and benefits. Thus, it is essential to manage temporal leadership behavior.

Originality/value

Our research provides new insight into understanding the costs and benefits of temporal leadership.

Citation

Mei, W., Zhu, Y., Nong, M. and Wang, Y. (2025), "Blessing or curse? A multilevel investigation of the benefits and costs of temporal leadership on employee proactive behavior", Baltic Journal of Management, Vol. 20 No. 1, pp. 92-108. https://doi.org/10.1108/BJM-07-2024-0341