The impact of emotional leadership on Chinese subordinates’ work engagement: role of intrinsic motivation and traditionality

Abstract Background Leaders’ emotions and emotion regulation strategies influence subordinates’ attitudes and behaviors, while previous studies have mostly taken an emotional perspective. Leaders’ emotional competence also has an impact on subordinates through motivational and cognitive pathways. Based on self-determination theory, this study examined the impact of emotional leadership on subordinates’ work engagement, as well as the mediating role of subordinates’ intrinsic motivation and the moderating role of traditionality. Methods We first performed a scenario experiment study in which 116 Chinese college students were asked to read experimental materials on different leadership behaviors and answer relevant questions. Subsequently, a questionnaire survey was conducted, in which 347 Chinese enterprise employees were asked to rate their own experiences with emotional leadership, work engagement and intrinsic motivation. We used SPSS 25.0 for performance reliability analysis, correlation analysis and hierarchical regression analysis to test the reliability of the scales and investigate the relationship between the variables. Bootstrap analysis was used to test the mediating and moderating effects. Results Emotional leadership has a significant direct positive effect on subordinates’ work engagement and positively influences subordinates’ work engagement through the mediation of subordinates’ intrinsic motivation. The effect of emotional leadership on intrinsic motivation is stronger for those with high traditionality than for those with low traditionality. Conclusion Emotional leadership can improve subordinates’ work engagement by stimulating their intrinsic motivation. Therefore, managers need to be able to effectively regulate and manage subordinates’ emotions to stimulate their intrinsic motivation and to differentiate the management of subordinates with different levels of traditionality to improve subordinates’ work engagement.