ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic has tested health care professionals to the extreme. This study investigated the re-enchanting effect of shared leadership and passion at work in the context of public health care. This study advances on the Self-Determination Theory to suggest that shared leadership has a positive effect on resilience and performance through passion at work at different levels of analysis. A sample of 518 physicians working in Spanish public hospitals was used. The results showed that shared leadership was associated with team and individual outcomes via passion at work at team level, while no significant mediating effect was found for passion at work at the individual level. The theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed, limitations are considered, and future research directions are suggested.JEL CLASSIFICATION: M12, M54
ABSTRACT
Health professionals managing patients with COVID-19 disease are at high risk of contagion. All medical personnel involved in caring for patients need coordination, knowledge and trust. Empirical work on human resources has tended to focus on the effects of human resource practices on performance, whereas leadership and social interactions have been overlooked. Based upon interviews with medical staff working in specialised medical units, this study uses the social capital theory to examine relationships among shared leadership, social capital, and contagion rates. First, shared leadership was found to positively affect COVID-19 contagion among health professionals. Second, by sharing information and a common language, and showing high levels of trust, namely social capital, medical units seem to reduce contagion rates of COVID-19. In other words, shared leadership plays a fundamental role in improving performance in healthcare by means of social capital.