A meta-analysis of leadership and intrinsic motivation: examining relative importance and moderators
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This paper provides the first meta-analytic examination of the relationship between leadership and followers' intrinsic motivation. In particular, we examined 6 leadership variables (transformational, ethical, leader-member exchange, servant, empowering, and abusive supervision) using data from 50 independent samples and 21,873 participants. We found that transformational leadership, ethical leadership, leader-member exchange (LMX), servant leadership, and empowering leadership were positively related to intrinsic motivation, whereas abusive supervision was negatively linked to intrinsic motivation. Although these leadership styles were associated with intrinsic motivation, they varied considerably in their relative importance. Empowering, ethical, and servant leadership emerged as the more important contributors to intrinsic motivation than transformational leadership. LMX showed a similar contribution with transformational leadership to intrinsic motivation. Effectiveness of leadership styles in relation to intrinsic motivation varied by power distance, publication year, and journal quality. Drawing on our findings, we discuss the theoretical and practice implications.
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Xue et al. (2022) found that the correlation between servant leadership (ethical leadership) and intrinsic motivation increases as the year increases.
“Interestingly, Xue et al. (2022) also found the correlation between servant leadership (ethical leadership) and intrinsic motivation increases, as the year increases.”
From Humble leadership and its outcomes: A meta-analysis (2022) · cites this paper as Xue et al. (2022)
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Humble leadership and its outcomes: A meta-analysis
Luo, Y., Zhang, Z., Chen, Q., Zhang, K., Wang, Y., & Peng, J. (2022) · Frontiers in Psychology · doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2022.980322 · Cited by 66 · see citing works
“Early meta-analyses (e.g., Bal et al., 2008;Wu et al., 2018; Li P. et al., 2021; Xue et al., 2022) identified the moderating roles of age, gender, study design (crosstemporal vs.”
BackgroundSelf-citation
- Authors
- Xue, H., Luo, Y., Luan, Y., & Wang, N.
- Affiliations
- Renmin University of China (CN)
- North Minzu University (CN)
- Corresponding author
- Wang, Nan
- Venue
- Frontiers in Psychology
- Publisher
- Frontiers Media SA
- Published
- 2022-08-12
- Volume
- 13
- Pages
- 941161-941161
- ISSN
- 1664-1078 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC9413051
- OpenAlex
- W4291156608
- Cited by
- 47
- References
- 17
- Citations by year
- 2026: 14 · 2025: 13 · 2024: 14 · 2023: 4 · 2022: 2
- FWCI
- 1.36
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Frontiers in Psychology (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management › Job Satisfaction and Organizational Behavior
- Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management › Employee Performance and Leadership
- Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Strategy and Management › Leadership and Management in Organizations
- Keywords
- leadership, intrinsic motivation, transformational leadership, ethical leadership, leader-member exchange, servant leadership, empowering leadership, abusive supervision, power distance, moderators, followers
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