High Involvement Work Practices and Employee Well-Being in the Public Sector: Does Public Values-Focused Transactional Leadership Make a Difference?

Addressing calls for research on the HRM-well-being association in the public sector, this study examines whether the relationship between high involvement work practices (HIWP) and both work engagement and emotional exhaustion is contingent on supervisors’ public values-focused transactional leadership (PVTL). Drawing on self-determination theory (SDT), the study proposes that HIWP will improve employees’ sense of well-being when their supervisors practice PVTL. This assertion was tested on a sample drawn from public sector universities in Pakistan. The findings illustrated that PVTL strengthened the positive relationship between HIWP and employees’ work engagement. Nevertheless, when supervisors’ exercised higher PVTL, the negative association between HIWP and perceived emotional exhaustion disappeared.