Despite the increasing interest in leaders’ health‐promoting behavior, the employees’ role in the effectiveness of such behavior and the mechanisms underlying how such leadership behavior affects their well‐being have largely been ignored. Drawing on implicit leadership theories, we advance the health‐oriented leadership literature by examining employees’ ideals, that is, their expectations regarding such leader behavior, as a moderating factor. We propose that higher expectations increase the association between actual health‐oriented leader behavior and employee‐rated leader‐member relationships (LMX) and health‐oriented behaviors by employees, which, in turn, positively relate to their well‐being (here: exhaustion and work engagement). We tested our theoretical model in three studies, using a cross‐sectional design (Study 1, N = 307), a two‐wave time‐lagged design (Study 2, N = 144) and an experimental design (Study 3, N = 173). We found that the effect of actual health‐oriented leader behavior on LMX is contingent on employees’ ideal health‐oriented leader behavior. Yet, for employees’ self‐care behavior, the proposed moderation was only significant in Study 1. High expectations strengthened the relationship between actual health‐oriented leader behavior with LMX and self‐care behavior, which, in turn, were associated with less exhaustion and more work engagement (only LMX), supporting most of our mediation hypotheses. Our results highlight the pivotal role of employees’ expectations regarding leaders’ health support and help in building practical interventions with regard to leaders’ health promotion.

Although researchers and practitioners increasingly focus on health promotion in organizations, research has been mainly fragmented and fails to integrate different organizational levels in terms of their effects on employee health. Drawing on organizational climate and social identity research, we present a cascading model of organizational health climate and demonstrate how and when leaders' perceptions of organizational health climate are linked to employee well‐being. We tested our model in two multisource studies (N_{Study 1} = 65 leaders and 291 employees; N_{Study 2} = 401 leader–employee dyads). Results showed that leaders' perceptions of organizational health climate were positively related to their health mindsets (i.e., their health awareness). These in turn were positively associated with their health‐promoting leadership behavior, which ultimately went along with better employee well‐being. Additionally, in Study 1, the relationship between perceived organizational health climate and leaders' health mindsets was moderated by their organizational identification. High leader identification strengthened the relationship between perceived organizational health climate and leaders' health mindsets. These findings have important implications for theory and practice as they show how the dynamics of an organizational health climate can unfold in organizations and how it is related to employee well‐being via the novel concept of health‐promoting leadership.

Considering recent corporate scandals, organizations have increased their efforts to curb unethical employee behavior. However, little is known about whether leaders comply with these efforts and how they respond to unethical employee behavior, especially when unethical actions benefit the organization. By integrating arguments from social identity and moral disengagement theories, we develop and test a model to explain how leaders respond to unethical pro‐organizational behavior (UPB) among employees. Results from one multi‐wave, multi‐source field study and one experiment showed that leader perceptions of employee UPB were positively related to leader trust in employees when leaders identified strongly with their organization or when they had a strong propensity to morally disengage. Moreover, the results revealed an important three‐way interaction effect. Leaders put considerable trust into UPB‐enacting employees when leaders both identified strongly with the organization and showed high levels of moral disengagement. In contrast, they put little trust into UPB‐enacting employees when leaders identified weakly with the organization and reported low moral disengagement. Furthermore, results showed that leader trust ultimately translated into perceived leader justice toward employees. These findings provide new and important insights into when organizations can(not) rely on their leaders to manage unethical employee behaviors.

The implications of telework are discussed controversially and research on its positive and negative effects has produced contradictory results. We explore voluntariness of employee telework as a boundary condition which may underpin these contradictory findings. Under normal circumstances, individuals who do more telework should perceive fewer disadvantages. However, during the COVID-19 pandemic, employees could no longer voluntarily choose to telecommute, as many organizations were forced to introduce telework by governmental regulations. In two studies, we examine whether the voluntary nature of telework moderates the association between the amount of telework and perceptions of disadvantage. In Study 1, we collected data before and during the COVID-19 pandemic (N = 327). Results show that pre-pandemic participants (who were more likely to voluntarily choose this form of work) reported fewer disadvantages the more telework they did, but this was not the case for employees during the COVID-19 pandemic. To validate these findings, we measured employees’ voluntariness of telework in Study 2 (N = 220). Results support the importance of voluntariness: Individuals who experience a high degree of voluntariness in choosing telework perceive fewer disadvantages the more they telework. However, the amount of telework was not related to reduced perceptions of disadvantages for those who experienced low voluntariness regarding the telecommuting arrangement. Our findings help to understand when telework is related to the perception of disadvantages and they can provide organizations with starting points for practical interventions to reduce the negative effects of telework.

We predicted that chronic pain patients have a more negative stress mindset and a lower level of social identification than people without chronic pain and that this, in turn, influences well-being through less adaptive coping. 1240 participants (465 chronic pain patients; 775 people in the control group) completed a cross-sectional online-survey. Chronic pain patients had a more negative stress mindset and a lower level of social identification than people without chronic pain. However, a positive stress mindset was linked to better well-being and fewer depressive symptoms, through the use of the adaptive coping behaviors positive reframing and active coping. A higher level of social identification did not impact well-being or depression through the use of instrumental and emotional support coping, but through the more frequent use of positive reframing and active coping. For chronic pain therapy, we propose including modules that foster social identification and a positive stress mindset.

The ability to respond appropriately to employees' work‐related well‐being requires leaders to pay attention to their employees' well‐being in the first place. We propose that leaders' stress mindset, that is, the belief that stress is enhancing versus debilitating, may bias their perception of employees' well‐being. We further propose that this judgment then influences leaders' intention to engage in or refrain from health‐oriented leadership behavior, to express higher performance expectations, or to promote their employees. We expect this process to be stronger if leaders strongly identify with their team, increasing their perceived similarity with their employees. In three experiments ( N ₁ = 198, N ₂ = 292, N ₃ = 250), we tested the effect of participants' stress mindset on their intention to show certain leadership behaviors, mediated by their perception of employee well‐being (emotional exhaustion, somatic symptoms, work engagement) and moderated by their team identification. Our findings largely support the association between stress mindset and the perception of well‐being. The results for the proposed mediation and the moderating function of identification were mixed. Overall, the results emphasize the critical role of leaders' stress mindset and may, thus, improve health promotion in organizations by helping leaders to adequately recognize employees' well‐being and respond appropriately.