As a response to declining working conditions, the current study aims to analyze the strategic alignment of leadership and organizational systems in creating “decent work.” Building on the motivation logic of the Job Demands-Resources approach, the main aim of the current research is to study the role of inclusive leadership as an important job resource, which drives the adoption of sustainable human resource management (HRM) practices that create decent work. The authors also examine the moderating role of leader conscientiousness as an important individual difference that creates boundaries to this resource development process.
A time-lagged two-wave survey approach was used to collect data from 278 service-sector employees. The hypothesized relationships, including mediation and moderated mediation effects, were tested using Hayes’ PROCESS macro in SPSS with bootstrapping techniques.
The findings reveal a positive relationship between inclusive leadership and decent work, where sustainable HRM practices act as partial mediators in the process. In addition, leader conscientiousness strengthens the relationship between inclusive leadership and sustainable HRM practices, resulting in higher levels of decent work.
This study extends the scarce decent work literature by showing inclusive leadership and sustainable HRM practices as important predictors of decent work and leader conscientiousness as a critical boundary condition. In the present work, the authors respond to the calls for research on leadership-based explanations of decent work in service contexts.
