Mixed Blessing: Toward a Dual Pathway Model of Leadership Role Occupancy and Leaders' Well-Being

Drawing upon the job demand–control model, we examine two pathways—job demands and job control—through which occupying leadership positions is related to leaders’ well-being including both psychological well-being (i.e., anxiety and subjective well-being) and physiological well-being (i.e., chronic diseases and stress hormones of cortisol and cortisone). Our results based on longitudinal data show that job demands and job control play distinctive mediating roles in the relationship between leadership role occupancy and leaders’ well-being. Specifically, leadership role occupancy positively relates to job demands, which in turn negatively predict well-being (i.e., positively relate to anxiety and chronic diseases and negatively relate to subjective well-being). On the other hand, leadership role occupancy positively associates with job control, which in turn positively relates to well-being (i.e., negatively relates to anxiety, chronic diseases, and cortisone, and positively relates to subjective well-bein...