Despite the relationship between leaders and employee physical well-being being widely investigated in organizational research, the interconnected nature of the specific motivational and affective mechanisms that explains this relationship remains unexplored. Furthermore, previous studies have largely overlooked the simultaneous examination of short-term and long-term underlying mechanisms in the leadership-employee well-being relationship.


This study integrates positive and negative leadership theories with the Conservation of Resource theory to examine this interconnected nature of motivational (role clarity and meaningful work) and affective (positive affect and thriving at work) mechanisms through which transformational and abusive leadership influence employee physical well-being.


Data were collected online via Qualtrics at seven time-point through a three-wave longitudinal design (with one-month intervals) from 204 full-time workers in Ghana. Given the nested structure of our data (repeated monthly measures nested within individuals), we conducted a multi-level analysis to examine our proposed model.


Our results from a multilevel path analysis showed that transformational and abusive leadership had, respectively, positive and negative impacts on employee physical well-being through the sequential mediation of motivational mechanisms (role clarity and meaningful work) and short-term (positive affect) and long-term (thriving at work) affective mechanisms. Additionally, our findings showed that positive affect (a short-term affective mechanism) played a more critical role than thriving at work (a long-term affective mechanism) in explaining how both transformational and abusive leadership influenced employee physical well-being via motivational mechanisms.


This study underscores the vital role of leadership in shaping employee physical well-being through interconnected motivational and affective pathways. Furthermore, the findings emphasize the importance of considering both short-term and long-term outcomes in the development of leadership interventions to improve employee physical well-being. Finally, addressing both supportive and harmful leadership behaviors is essential for promoting healthier workforce.