Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to develop and validate a Work Environment Complexity (WEC) Scale for leaders.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper uses both cross-sectional and longitudinal data, gathered in the course of major organisational restructuring, using samples from employees (n=305) and leaders (n=120) in two health care organisations.
Findings
The research developed and validated a scale of WEC for leaders with two factors: frequent change and events, and uncertain work demands. Comparisons between samples suggest diverging employee and leadership representations of WEC.
Practical implications
Being the first scale to measure the comprehensive construct of WEC, a foundation is laid to measure the amount of complexity in a leader’s work and the functioning of leaders with regards to WEC.
Originality/value
This paper contributes to leadership research and practice by clarifying the construct of WEC for leaders empirically and validating a bidimensional scale of WEC.
