Thriving or Withdrawing: How Job Crafting and Disengagement Shape Responses to Daily Laissez-faire Leadership

Abstract Although laissez-faire leadership is common in organizations and has been linked to detrimental effects on employees, little is known about its daily effects and how employees cope with this type of behavior. Drawing on the job demands-resources model and using a daily diary design, we examine the daily effects of laissez-faire leadership depending on followers’ coping styles, capturing both adaptive and maladaptive responses. Specifically, we argue that the negative effect of laissez-faire leadership on next-day performance via evening job satisfaction is mitigated on days that followers engage in job crafting, while it is amplified on days that followers engage in disengagement coping. We collected data twice a day over one working week in an experience sampling study with 127 employees (i.e., after work and before bedtime; 359 data points). Our findings revealed no direct effect of laissez-faire leadership. However, there was a positive indirect effect of laissez-faire leadership on next-day performance via evening job satisfaction on days when employees engaged in high levels of job crafting, supporting its hypothesized beneficial effect. Conversely, as hypothesized, a negative indirect effect was observed on days when disengagement coping was high. By identifying the mixed effects of laissez-faire leadership, this study offers a fresh perspective that challenges the dominant view of its uniformly negative consequences, revealing how its downstream effects vary within individuals depending on their daily coping strategies.