Engaging leadership in health care during the COVID-19 pandemic and followers’ engagement and quality of care
ISSN: 1751-1879
Article publication date: 10 July 2024
Issue publication date: 2 January 2025
Abstract
Purpose
Investigating the role of leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic in maintaining the well-being and performance of the medical personnel, as frontline workers, is of major importance. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationships between engaging leadership in health care during COVID-19 pandemic and followers’ work engagement and performance and to test the mediating role of followers’ basic psychological need satisfaction in these relationships.
Design/methodology/approach
A cross-sectional study was conducted on a sample consisting of 200 health-care employees. Data were collected starting with May 2020 and ending with November 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Participants reported on the engaging leadership of their direct supervisor and on their own psychological need satisfaction, work meaningfulness, work engagement and quality of care.
Findings
The positive association between engaging leadership and followers’ work engagement was fully mediated by followers’ basic needs satisfaction. The relationship between engaging leadership and followers’ quality of patient care was not supported. Work meaningfulness did not mediate the link between engaging leadership and followers’ engagement.
Practical implications
By meeting followers’ needs for autonomy, competence and relatedness, engaging leaders can stimulate followers’ work engagement during outbreaks and other similar crises. Managers in health care may maintain a high level of followers’ work engagement during crises if they adopt an engaging leadership style.
Originality/value
The study investigated for the first time the role of meeting the psychological needs of health-care workers by leaders during a health-care crisis.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
Erratum: It has come to the attention of the publisher that the article, Oprea, B., Ionescu-Avram, D., Armas, I. and Avram, E. (2024), “Engaging leadership in health care during the COVID-19 pandemic and followers’ engagement and quality of care”, Leadership in Health Services, Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/LHS-02-2024-0022, incorrectly listed the affiliation of the author Iuliana Armas. This error was introduced during the production process and has been corrected in the online version of the article. The publisher sincerely apologises for this error and any inconvenience caused.
Conflict of interest statement: The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.
Ethical statement: All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the Research Ethics Committee of the University of Bucharest and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.
Informed consent: Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants involved in the study.
Data availability: The data sets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
Citation
Oprea, B., Ionescu-Avram, D., Armas, I. and Avram, E. (2025), "Engaging leadership in health care during the COVID-19 pandemic and followers’ engagement and quality of care", Leadership in Health Services, Vol. 38 No. 1, pp. 1-14. https://doi.org/10.1108/LHS-02-2024-0022
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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