Abstract
Over the past few decades, interest in loneliness – broadly defined as the subjective, unpleasant experience of social disconnectedness – has grown significantly. Scholars from disciplines such as psychology, sociology, and philosophy have been studying the phenomenon and its largely undesirable consequences to individual health, general functioning, and relational outcomes. Despite rising academic interest in these adjacent academic domains, loneliness has only recently started to attract attention in the management field. This is surprising, given the potential negative organizational and managerial implications of loneliness.
Leaders, particularly, seem to be vulnerable to experiences of loneliness. Yet, scholars tend to conflate leader loneliness with general loneliness. Considering leadership often involves directing teams, influencing strategic directions, and making high-pressure decisions in organizations, a generalized approach ignores these leadership-specific factors that may trigger loneliness experiences.
To better understand this overlooked phenomenon, I adopted multiple perspectives and methods in this PhD thesis. In the first project, I conducted a review-based critique of evidence that attempted the question: does loneliness matter for leadership? Recent years saw an increase in academic literature trying to answer this question. While leader loneliness is an important concern for organizations, it remains unclear how existing research could support theory and practice of this phenomenon. I synthesized and evaluated the literature, including 69 empirical articles and five conceptual pieces, to lay foundation for the organizational scholarship of leader loneliness. By critically evaluating prior work across levels of analysis and research paradigms, I clarified the conceptualization of leader loneliness, provided an integrative understanding of the antecedents and outcomes, discussed issues of previous research, and offered a research agenda for future research to understand loneliness in leadership contexts. My critique suggests that the current scientific field has four conceptual and methodological limitations. First, the conceptual representation of leader loneliness is unclear. The concept is often conflated with general loneliness. As a result, leadership-specific antecedents and outcomes are missing in the theoretical conceptualizations. Second, findings based on different research paradigms and levels of analysis have led to inconsistent yet unreconciled conclusions. Third, the measurement of leader loneliness is often imprecise. Fourth, the methodological concerns in previous studies hinder the interpretation of many available findings. Specifically, some quantitative studies incur endogeneity issues, while a number of qualitative studies involve research design issues.
In the second project, I adopted an inductive, narrative approach to understand how leaders make sense of loneliness experiences. Despite the cultural narrative of “lonely at the top”, organizational members rarely consider loneliness as a leadership challenge. The stigma on negative emotions and romanticized view on leadership further contributed to the continued silence on workplace loneliness. Moreover, prior work often assumed that loneliness was a universal experience and ignored the nuances of individual relational expectations and meanings attached to loneliness. I conducted in-depth interviews with 26 leaders in the Netherlands and extracted stories about their day-to-day leadership and loneliness experiences in their organizational roles. My narrative analysis revealed that loneliness is situated and adaptive for leaders requiring a dynamic perspective. Bringing narratives of leadership meta-categories and instances of loneliness experiences together, I proposed a characterization model of leadership and loneliness that shows the processes of (a) successful adaptation and (b) loneliness perpetuation through making sense of loneliness triggers and deploying one’s coping repertoire. My conceptual model has implications for the blooming literature of loneliness in leadership contexts.
In the third project, I examined subjective power and self-disclosure across hierarchy to explain the emergence of loneliness of mid-level managers. Previous studies often focus on either individual or peer-related factors to loneliness and ignored the influence of organizational hierarchy on relationships and emotions at work. Integrating social penetration theory and the power literature, I proposed that self-disclosure across hierarchy, i.e., to superiors and to followers, would reduce workplace loneliness; and that subjective power would relate negatively to loneliness via self-disclosure across hierarchy. Across two studies, I tested my model in the mid-level management context, in which loneliness is prevalent and the hierarchical influence is salient. In an online experiment (Study 1; N = 453), I manipulated the frequency and target (to superiors vs. to followers) of self-disclosure and found that frequent self-disclosure, both upwards and downwards, could reduce loneliness. In a three-wave, time-lagged survey study (Study 2; N = 200), I showed that employees with high subjective power were more likely to share personal, sensitive information to their superiors and to their followers, and hence reported feeling less lonely at work. However, results from a supplementary analysis suggest that upward disclosure was more effective than downward disclosure in preventing workplace loneliness. Finally, I present evidence that workplace loneliness had positive associations with emotional exhaustion, ego depletion, and sleep problems.
Together, my work is a timely response to the loneliness “epidemic” and calls for more attention to leader well-being issues in both research and practice.
Leaders, particularly, seem to be vulnerable to experiences of loneliness. Yet, scholars tend to conflate leader loneliness with general loneliness. Considering leadership often involves directing teams, influencing strategic directions, and making high-pressure decisions in organizations, a generalized approach ignores these leadership-specific factors that may trigger loneliness experiences.
To better understand this overlooked phenomenon, I adopted multiple perspectives and methods in this PhD thesis. In the first project, I conducted a review-based critique of evidence that attempted the question: does loneliness matter for leadership? Recent years saw an increase in academic literature trying to answer this question. While leader loneliness is an important concern for organizations, it remains unclear how existing research could support theory and practice of this phenomenon. I synthesized and evaluated the literature, including 69 empirical articles and five conceptual pieces, to lay foundation for the organizational scholarship of leader loneliness. By critically evaluating prior work across levels of analysis and research paradigms, I clarified the conceptualization of leader loneliness, provided an integrative understanding of the antecedents and outcomes, discussed issues of previous research, and offered a research agenda for future research to understand loneliness in leadership contexts. My critique suggests that the current scientific field has four conceptual and methodological limitations. First, the conceptual representation of leader loneliness is unclear. The concept is often conflated with general loneliness. As a result, leadership-specific antecedents and outcomes are missing in the theoretical conceptualizations. Second, findings based on different research paradigms and levels of analysis have led to inconsistent yet unreconciled conclusions. Third, the measurement of leader loneliness is often imprecise. Fourth, the methodological concerns in previous studies hinder the interpretation of many available findings. Specifically, some quantitative studies incur endogeneity issues, while a number of qualitative studies involve research design issues.
In the second project, I adopted an inductive, narrative approach to understand how leaders make sense of loneliness experiences. Despite the cultural narrative of “lonely at the top”, organizational members rarely consider loneliness as a leadership challenge. The stigma on negative emotions and romanticized view on leadership further contributed to the continued silence on workplace loneliness. Moreover, prior work often assumed that loneliness was a universal experience and ignored the nuances of individual relational expectations and meanings attached to loneliness. I conducted in-depth interviews with 26 leaders in the Netherlands and extracted stories about their day-to-day leadership and loneliness experiences in their organizational roles. My narrative analysis revealed that loneliness is situated and adaptive for leaders requiring a dynamic perspective. Bringing narratives of leadership meta-categories and instances of loneliness experiences together, I proposed a characterization model of leadership and loneliness that shows the processes of (a) successful adaptation and (b) loneliness perpetuation through making sense of loneliness triggers and deploying one’s coping repertoire. My conceptual model has implications for the blooming literature of loneliness in leadership contexts.
In the third project, I examined subjective power and self-disclosure across hierarchy to explain the emergence of loneliness of mid-level managers. Previous studies often focus on either individual or peer-related factors to loneliness and ignored the influence of organizational hierarchy on relationships and emotions at work. Integrating social penetration theory and the power literature, I proposed that self-disclosure across hierarchy, i.e., to superiors and to followers, would reduce workplace loneliness; and that subjective power would relate negatively to loneliness via self-disclosure across hierarchy. Across two studies, I tested my model in the mid-level management context, in which loneliness is prevalent and the hierarchical influence is salient. In an online experiment (Study 1; N = 453), I manipulated the frequency and target (to superiors vs. to followers) of self-disclosure and found that frequent self-disclosure, both upwards and downwards, could reduce loneliness. In a three-wave, time-lagged survey study (Study 2; N = 200), I showed that employees with high subjective power were more likely to share personal, sensitive information to their superiors and to their followers, and hence reported feeling less lonely at work. However, results from a supplementary analysis suggest that upward disclosure was more effective than downward disclosure in preventing workplace loneliness. Finally, I present evidence that workplace loneliness had positive associations with emotional exhaustion, ego depletion, and sleep problems.
Together, my work is a timely response to the loneliness “epidemic” and calls for more attention to leader well-being issues in both research and practice.
Original language | English |
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Awarding Institution |
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Award date | 5 Oct 2023 |
Place of Publication | Rotterdam |
Print ISBNs | 978-90-5892-668-5 |
Publication status | Published - 5 Oct 2023 |