Conquering precarious work through inclusive leadership: Important roles of structural empowerment and leader political skill

Abstract

Given the prevalence of precarious work in the social fabric of organizations, its negative repercussions for employees and organizations, and the scarcity of research on how organizational leadership can improve working conditions, we suggest inclusive leaders as a remedy to precarious work. Drawing on stakeholder theory, we propose that inclusive leadership is negatively associated with precarious work, both directly and indirectly, via structural empowerment. We also hypothesize that leader political skill moderates the positive relationship between inclusive leadership and structural empowerment and the negative indirect (via structural empowerment) association between inclusive leadership and precarious work. Two-source and time-lagged survey data collected from 311 employees and their supervisors supported our hypotheses. Other than contributions to the literature on inclusive leadership, structural empowerment, and precarious work, this study offers several imperative practical implications that can help organizations counter precarious work and its negative repercussions.