Leadership development as an intervention in occupational health psychology

A growing body of literature suggests that organizational leadership is linked to a wide variety of employee outcomes, both positive and negative, relevant to occupational health and safety. All organizations have individuals in a leadership role, but few researchers consider leadership training as an effective intervention. This may be because such studies are difficult to conduct and because the target, being the employees, is indirect. In this paper for the special edition of Work & Stress, we review studies linking leadership to individual well-being and safety in organizations. These include studies concerning leadership style, abusive supervision and organizational fairness. We highlight intervention studies that suggest that these linkages are causal and that leadership development, usually in the form of training, is an effective intervention in occupational health psychology. It is proposed that leadership development should be a main target for research on interventions in Occupational health psychology. The characteristics of leadership development interventions and directions for future research are discussed.