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BJM
17,1 Inclusive leadership and employee
work engagement: a moderated
mediation model
124 Ping Bao
Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China
Received 2 June 2021
Revised 15 September 2021 Zengrui Xiao
5 November 2021
Accepted 13 November 2021
Zhejiang Sci-Tech University, Hangzhou, China
Gongmin Bao
Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China, and
Niels Noorderhaven
Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands

Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between inclusive leadership and employee
work engagement by identifying person-job fit as a mediator, and employee felt responsibility as a moderator.
Design/methodology/approach – Employing a two-wave survey from 261 employees across various
industries in China, the study tests hypotheses using hierarchical regression analysis with the PROCESS
procedure developed by Hayes.
Findings – The results show that inclusive leadership is positively related to employee work engagement
through person-job fit. The results further demonstrate that employees’ felt responsibility moderates the
positive direct relationship between inclusive leadership and person-job fit as well as the indirect relationship
between inclusive leadership and work engagement via person-job fit.
Research limitations/implications – Although two-wave data were used to test the model, issues of
common method bias cannot be excluded because the data were collected from a single source (the employee).
Practical implications – Organizations should promote and develop inclusive leaders in the workplace to
enhance employee work engagement, and pay attention to employees’ felt responsibility for their work to
ensure effectiveness of inclusive leadership.
Originality/value – Integrating social information processing theory and person-environment fit theory, this
study enriches the theoretical foundation of inclusive leadership scholarship. This study deepens the
understanding of the mechanism underlying the link between inclusive leadership and work engagement, as
well as an important boundary condition of this relationship, by examining the mediating role of person-job fit
and the moderating role of felt responsibility.
Keywords Inclusive leadership, Person-job fit, Work engagement, Felt responsibility
Paper type Research paper

Introduction
Work engagement is important to both individuals and organizations (Shuck et al., 2011), and
over the last three decades, this topic has attracted much attention from organizational
researchers (Amor et al., 2020). Work engagement is defined as a positive, fulfilling, work-
related state of mind, characterized by vigor, dedication and absorption (Schaufeli et al., 2002,
p. 702). Vigor refers to high levels of energy and mental resilience while working, the
willingness to invest effort in one’s work, and persistence when confronted with difficulties;
dedication is characterized by being strongly involved in one’s work and experiencing a sense
of significance, enthusiasm, inspiration, pride and challenge; and absorption refers to a state
Baltic Journal of Management
of full concentration on work and positive engrossment in it (Schaufeli et al., 2002). Previous
Vol. 17 No. 1, 2022
pp. 124-139
© Emerald Publishing Limited Funding: This research is funded by National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant
1746-5265
DOI 10.1108/BJM-06-2021-0219 numbers 71572173.
research has consistently revealed that work engagement is a stimulus for organizational Leadership and
success as well as various positive employee outcomes (Lai et al., 2020; Schaufeli and Bakker, employee work
2010). Thus, how to boost employee work engagement has become a primary concern for
many organizations, and many studies have explored various antecedents of work
engagement
engagement (Shuck et al., 2011).
Among the antecedents, leadership has been identified as a vital driver to enhance employee
work engagement. Particularly, inclusive leadership has been found to have a strong influence
on employee work engagement (Cenkci et al., 2020). However, despite the importance of inclusive 125
leadership in predicting employee work engagement, only a few studies have examined the
mechanisms underlying the relationship between inclusive leadership and employee work
engagement. Research linking inclusive leadership and employee work engagement has
primarily focused on two categories of mediators: (1) the employee’s characteristics, such as
psychological capital (Zhou, 2018), and (2) organizational characteristics, such as organizational
procedural justice (Cenkci et al., 2020). Although these studies assisted in explaining how
inclusive leadership impacts employee work engagement, one important potential mediator
aspect regarding the interaction of individual attributes and organizational characteristics has
remained unexplored. This is an omission, because according to Caldwell and O’Reilly (1990),
compared to either individual attributes or organizational characteristics, the interaction of
individual attributes and organizational characteristics (like perceived fit between the employee
and the environment) plays a more important role in explaining employee attitudinal or
behavioral outcomes (like work engagement). Additionally, examining mechanisms from an
interaction perspective rather than focusing on the characteristics in isolation helps researchers
to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the mechanisms linking inclusive leadership
and work engagement. Therefore, an examination is apposite of how an employee’s perceived fit
between himself/herself and the environment mediates the relation between inclusive leadership
and work engagement.
Moreover, although inclusive leadership is viewed as a positive leadership style, there is a
paucity of research on the boundary conditions of inclusive leadership effectiveness. Some
scholars have found a positive relationship between inclusive leadership and desirable
outcomes, such as employees’ creativity (Carmeli et al., 2010) and work engagement (Cenkci
et al., 2020), while others have found opposite or no effects of inclusive leadership on desirable
outcomes. For example, Zhu et al. (2020) found that inclusive leadership had a negative effect
on employee creativity. Thus, there is a need to identify the situational factors that moderate
the positive effects of inclusive leadership, to reconcile these inconsistent findings (Zheng
et al., 2018). Lin et al. (2019) have suggested that the effects of leader behaviors do not occur in
a vacuum, but rather are shaped by the characteristics of employees. Accordingly, variations
in employee characteristics may have a major impact on how inclusive leadership affects
employee work engagement. However, the empirical evidence is still very limited, and this
hinders the advancement of the inclusive leadership literature. Thus, empirical research
exploring the moderating effects of individual characteristics on the relationship between
inclusive leadership and employee work engagement is desirable.
To bridge these aforementioned research gaps, this study proposes a moderated
mediation model to explore the relationship between inclusive leadership and employee work
engagement based on social information processing theory and person-environment fit
theory. This study proposes that person-environment fit perceptions play a mediating role in
linking inclusive leadership to employee work engagement. In particular, this study focuses
on the perceived person-job fit, a specific form of person-environment fit perception, as a
mediating mechanism in this relationship, as this fit perception most significantly affects
work-related outcomes, such as work engagement (Kristof-Brown et al., 2005). As Chi and Pan
(2012) suggested, leaders are the most proximal and influential information source for
employees and determine how they judge and construct the key aspects of their environment,
BJM such as the assessment of the job. Inclusive leaders’ behaviors convey a strong signal that
17,1 they value and appreciate employees’ contributions and respect the needs of employees
(Randel et al., 2018). Through processing information cues from their inclusive leaders,
employees come to feel that their leaders have concern for their interests and that their work
can be influential in the organization, which, in turn, provides employees with increased
resources to better satisfy their work demands. That is, inclusive leaders’ behaviors can
influence an employee’s perceived fit with his/her job, which facilitates the satisfaction of
126 psychological needs and typically predicts employee work engagement (Yu, 2009). Therefore,
it is reasonable to expect that inclusive leadership can impact employee work engagement by
influencing the person-job fit perceived by the employee.
Furthermore, this study also investigates an important individual characteristic as a
moderator to clarify a boundary condition of the influence of inclusive leadership influence on
employee work engagement. Specifically, this study examines the moderating effect of
employees’ felt responsibility. We focus on felt responsibility because previous research suggests
that this psychological state plays an important role in influencing employees’ cognitive
functioning, and further may amplify the potential of social information processing (Dust et al.,
2018). However, this construct is understudied in empirical research (Freitas et al., 2019). As a
positive psychological state, employees with different levels of felt responsibility will react
differently to inclusive leaders. Employees with higher felt responsibility at work are likely to
experience greater intrinsic motivation to internalize their leader’s cues and to be more willing to
make extra efforts to develop abilities to meet job requirements (Freitas et al., 2019), thereby
strengthening the positive impact of inclusive leadership. In contrast, employees with a lower
level of felt responsibility may be less motivated to process the information cues embedded in
inclusive leader behaviors and be more reluctant to make any extra effort to develop abilities to
satisfy the job requirements better, thereby weakening the effects of inclusive leadership.
In sum, this study develops and tests a moderated mediation framework linking inclusive
leadership to work engagement, with person-job fit as the underlying mechanism and felt
responsibility as the moderator of the underlying mechanism. The study makes several
contributions to the literature. First, different from most of the previous studies that theorize
the link between inclusive leadership and employee work engagement from the perspective of
social exchange theory (Zheng et al., 2018), this study provides an additional theoretical lens
explaining the association between inclusive leadership and employee work engagement and
enriches the theoretical foundation of inclusive leadership scholarship by integrating social
information processing theory and person-environment fit theory. Second, this study
unpacks the “black box” of the link between inclusive leadership and employee work
engagement by introducing person-job fit as a mediator and thus deepens our understanding
of the underlying mechanism causing the association between inclusive leadership and work
engagement. Third, this study examines the moderating role of felt responsibility and, by
doing so, clarifies an important boundary condition for the positive impact of inclusive
leadership on work engagement, which contributes to some degree to reconciling the
contradicting results in previous studies.

Literature review and hypothesis development

Inclusive leadership and work engagement
Work engagement is a positive, affective-motivational state of high energy combined with
high levels of dedication and a strong focus on work (Schaufeli and Bakker, 2010). Only those
who present themselves physically, cognitively and emotionally throughout their role
performance are fully engaged. These employees are more attentive, connected and focused
on their task performance (Lai et al., 2020). Given the importance of work engagement, the
literature has investigated its antecedents, and one of the most important of these is
leadership. However, although numerous studies have examined the relationships between Leadership and
different forms of leadership and work engagement, such as transformational leadership (Bui employee work
et al., 2017) and empowering leadership (Cai et al., 2018), little attention has been paid to
inclusive leadership.
engagement
Inclusive leadership refers to leaders who exhibit openness, accessibility and availability
in their interactions with followers (Carmeli et al., 2010). Compared with existing leadership
styles associated with work engagement, inclusive leadership may play a unique role in
fostering work engagement because it is distinguished by its core focus on meeting 127
employees’ uniqueness and belongingness needs, whereas other forms of leadership diverge
in this regard (Rodriguez., 2018). For example, transformational leadership, which has been
discussed the most extensively in leadership-work engagement literature, focuses on
motivating employees according to organizational needs and does not typically involve
acknowledging employees’ uniqueness when interacting with them. In contrast, inclusive
leaders are more likely to exhibit behaviors simultaneously satisfying employee uniqueness
and belonging needs, inspiring employees to fully engage in their work (Randel et al., 2018).
The positive association between inclusive leadership and employee work engagement
can be explained as follows. First, as inclusive leaders are open to employees and are willing
to discuss new ideas and opportunities with them, employees are more likely to feel that they
are being respected and that their ideas and efforts will be appreciated by the organization
(Carmeli et al., 2010). These positive feelings are expected to increase employees’ sense of
accomplishment derived from their work (Zhu et al., 2009), which encourages employees to
devote their full efforts to their work. Second, since inclusive leaders are available and
accessible for employees whenever in need, employees tend to perceive that their leaders and
working environment are supportive (Qi et al., 2019). This perceived support provides
psychological resources for employees to handle job demands and encourages employees to
persevere in difficult moments, factors that are strongly associated with a high level of work
engagement (Cai et al., 2018). Third, as inclusive leaders appreciate employees and invite
them to contribute to the organization (Nembhard and Edmondson, 2006), they facilitate
belongingness among employees and demonstrate to employees that their uniqueness is
valued and welcomed by the organization (Randel et al., 2018). With belongingness and
uniqueness, two fundamental psychological needs are fulfilled, and employees are likely to
experience a high level of identification and affective commitment to the organization (Van
Lange et al., 2011). This may convince employees that the organization deserves the
investment of additional efforts and that they should be fully engaged in their work (Shuck
et al., 2011). Taken these arguments together, we formulate the following hypothesis:
H1. Inclusive leadership is positively related to employee work engagement.

The mediating role of person-job fit

Person-job fit refers to a match between individual characteristics and job requirements
(Edwards, 1991). The concept of person-job fit is embedded in person-environment theory,
and it has been demonstrated by many studies that person-job fit benefits organizations and
individuals. Many studies have further demonstrated the mediating effects of person-job fit in
the relationship between organizational and individual factors, such as transformational
leadership and work engagement (Bui et al., 2017) and inclusive leadership and employee
well-being (Choi et al., 2017). However, it remains unknown whether inclusive leadership also
stimulates employee work engagement through enhancing perceived person-job fit.
Social information processing theory posits that employees understand their environment
through processing social information in the workplace, which, in turn, influences their work
attitudes and behaviors (Salancik and Pfeffer, 1978). Leaders, a vital source of social
information for employees, play a significant role in terms of influencing followers’
BJM assessments of their job (Chi and Pan, 2012), such as perceived fit between their
17,1 characteristics with their job requirements. This study argues that inclusive leaders send
powerful messages and signals to employees and facilitate employees’ person-job fit
perceptions in three ways. First, as leaders are open to followers’ communication regarding
new ideas and ways to achieve desired work goals, employees come to perceive that their
ideas and perspectives are influential and their work is important, and thus they will
experience a greater level of confidence and meaningfulness in performing their jobs. The
128 sense of feeling confident and meaningful will increase the followers’ psychological resources
to meet their job requirements. Second, by being ready to listen to concerns from followers
and accessible to deal with emergent issues in the workplace, inclusive leaders send a clear
signal to employees that they care for their interests and that it is safe to approach them when
they face difficulties in their work (Carmeli et al., 2010). The sense of psychological safety and
accessible support from leaders will motivate the employees to put extra effort into their work
tasks, enabling them to achieve a better job fit. Third, as inclusive leaders are available to be
consulted on problems and to offer professional guidance and advice to employees, they
transmit a salient message that they are willing to help employees gain access to knowledge
resources and that they are eager to develop their followers’ skills (Zeng et al., 2020). By
learning from their leaders’ knowledge and experience, employees can acquire further
knowledge and develop their skills, which are essential facilitators to achieve better person-
job fit. In short, employees will achieve a heightened person-job fit perception by processing
information from inclusive leader behaviors. Therefore, we hypothesize the following:
H2. Inclusive leadership is positively related to employees’ person-job fit.
Further, we expect that person-job fit perceptions, facilitated by inclusive leadership, will, in
turn, lead to the enhancement of employee work engagement. The positive association between
person-job fit and work engagement has already been discussed extensively in prior theoretical
and empirical research. For example, Yu (2009) proposes that person-job fit is a significant
factor facilitating the satisfaction of psychological needs, and therefore it leads to work
engagement. Bui et al. (2017) also found that person-job fit is positively associated with work
engagement. Based on previous work, this study argues for a link between person-job fit and
work engagement in the following ways. Employees who perceive a high level of person-job fit
will experience less strain and burnout (Maslach and Leiter, 2008), and thus tend to be more
energetic to engage in their work. Moreover, employees who experience a high level of person-
job fit perception will find their job more enjoyable (Choi et al., 2017), which, in turn, may raise
employees’ enthusiasm to apply their discretionary effort to engage in their work. Thus, we
assert that a higher level of perceived person-job fit is related to increased employee work
engagement. Taken together, we conclude that inclusive leadership facilitates employee
perceived person-job fit, which, in turn, motivates employees to be engaged in their work. That
is, person-job fit mediates the relationship between inclusive leadership and work engagement.
Because there are also other mechanisms through which inclusive leadership may enhance
work engagement, we expect a partial rather than a full mediation of perceived person-job fit in
linking inclusive leadership and work engagement. For example, inclusive leadership could
increase employee work engagement also through organizational procedural justice (Cenkci
et al., 2020). Thus, we posit the following hypothesis:
H3. Person-job fit partially mediates the relationship between inclusive leadership and
work engagement.

The moderating role of felt responsibility

Thus far, the hypotheses provide an account for the positive effect of inclusive leadership on
employees’ person-job fit and the mediating effect of person-job fit on the relationship
between inclusive leadership and employee work engagement. However, we argue that these Leadership and
effects will depend on employees’ felt responsibility. Social information processing theory employee work
suggests that employees process and interpret information cues from their inclusive leader
behaviors, which, in turn, encourages them to achieve better person-job fit. However, the
engagement
extent to which followers process and interpret inclusive leader behaviors and how they react
depend on the employee’s felt responsibility at work.
Felt responsibility is a psychological state where one feels accountable for the results of
his/her work (Hackman and Oldham, 1974). We argue that felt responsibility moderates the 129
relationship between inclusive leadership and employee perceived person-job fit, theorizing
that those with higher felt responsibility at work are likely to be more concerned with job
outcomes and pay more careful attention to their performance at work (Pearce and Gregersen,
1991). As a result, they will probably be more sensitive to the information cues provided by
inclusive leaders, which can help them to better satisfy job demands. Additionally, if
employees feel more accountable and responsible for their work, they will experience greater
intrinsic motivation to internalize leader cues and be more willing to put in extra efforts to
develop abilities to meet job requirements (Freitas et al., 2019). In contrast, those with lower
felt responsibility at work may be less motivated to process the information cues embedded in
inclusive leader behaviors and be more reluctant to exert extra effort to develop abilities to
better satisfy the job requirements. Therefore, we predict that employees’ felt responsibility
at work will moderate the relationship between inclusive leadership and person-job fit. The
hypothesis is:
H4. The employees’ felt responsibility moderates the relationship between inclusive
leadership and person-job fit, such that the positive relationship is stronger when the
employees’ felt responsibility is high than when it is low.
The research framework and hypotheses are presented in Figure 1.

Figure 1.
Research framework

Method
Participants and procedures
Data were collected using questionnaires administrated to full-time employees of various
industries in China, such as financial services, IT and real estate. The authors used a
convenience sampling method to collect the data by contacting organizational managers
through personal networks and requesting managers to ask for their employees to
voluntarily participate in the survey. With the assistance of these managers, a list of 350
voluntary participants was compiled. Before administrating the questionnaires, all the
participants were informed that their responses would be used solely for academic purposes
and that the information they provided would be confidential and anonymous.
To minimize the influence of common method bias, data collection was carried out in two
phases over a three-week time interval. Employees could receive a small monetary incentive
after completing each wave of the questionnaire. At time 1, a total of 350 employee
BJM participants were asked to report their demographic information and assessment of inclusive
17,1 leadership and perceived person-job fit. A total of 306 responses were received. After
excluding uncompleted and invalid questionnaires, we obtained 297 useable questionnaires
(an effective response rate of 85%). Three weeks later, we sent the second questionnaire to
those employees who had finished the questionnaire at time 1 and asked them to report their
felt responsibility and work engagement. A total of 271 employees completed the responses.
After excluding 10 unqualified questionnaires, 261 pairs of questionnaires were finally
130 obtained (representing an effective matching rate of 74.57%). Demographics of the sample
are tabulated in Table 1.

Measures
All measures involved in this study were originally written in English. Thus, to ensure the
translation equivalence of the English-based scales into Chinese, a back-translation
procedure was followed (Brislin, 1980). The original scales were first translated into
Chinese by a bilingual graduate student, and then the translation back into English was
undertaken independently by another bilingual graduate student. Then, a bilingual
management professor compared the English and Chinese versions of the surveys and
concluded that they were highly comparable. All of the measures were rated on a 7-point
Likert-type scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree).
Inclusive leadership. We measured inclusive leadership with the scale developed by
Carmeli et al. (2010). Sample items include “My supervisor is open to hearing new ideas” (for
openness), “My supervisor is available for consultation on problems” (for availability) and

Demographics Characteristics Frequency Percentage (%)

Gender Male 147 56.3

Female 114 43.7
Age 28 years old or below 179 68.6
29–33 years-old 56 21.5
34–39 years old 10 3.8
40–45 years old 8 3.1
46 years old or above 8 3.1
Education Associate degree or below 16 6.1
Bachelor degree 122 46.7
Postgraduate degree 114 43.7
Doctoral degree 9 3.4
Tenure 3 years or below 190 72.8
4–6 years 40 15.3
7–10 years 12 4.6
11–14 years 7 2.7
15 years or above 12 4.6
Organization sector Manufacturing 59 22.6
Consulting 49 18.8
IT 40 15.3
Real estate 26 10.0
Others 87 33.3
Table 1. Organization size 49 employees or below 35 13.4
Demographic 50–249 employees 44 16.9
characteristics of 250–499 employees 20 7.7
respondents and 500–999 employees 24 9.2
organizations 1,000–1,999 employees 39 14.9
(N 5 261) 2,000 employees or above 99 37.9
“My supervisor is accessible for discussing emerging problems” (for accessibility). The Leadership and
overall Cronbach’s alpha for the scale was 0.91. employee work
Person-job fit. We measured person-job fit with the scale from Mulki et al. (2006). A sample
item is, “There is a good fit between my job and me.” The Cronbach’s alpha for the scale
engagement
was 0.89.
Felt responsibility. We measured felt responsibility with the scale from Hackman and
Oldham (1974). A sample item is, “I feel a very high degree of personal responsibility for the
work I do on this job.” The Cronbach’s alpha for the scale was 0.82. 131
Work engagement. We measured work engagement with the scale developed by Schaufeli
et al. (2006). Sample items include “At my work, I feel bursting with energy” (for vigor), “I am
enthusiastic about my job” (for dedication) and “I am immersed in my work” (for absorption).
The Cronbach’s alpha for the scale was 0.90.
Control variables. Consistent with previous research, several demographic variables were
controlled for in the study to rule out alternative explanations. We controlled for participants’
gender, age, education level and organizational tenure because previous research has shown
these variables are associated with employee work engagement (Mauno et al., 2007). Besides,
we also controlled for the industry of the organizations and their size, because this could
potentially influence the results.

Data analysis
Mplus 7 and SPSS 22 were used to analyze the data in this study. First, confirmatory factor
analysis was conducted to examine the distinctiveness of the constructs using Mplus 7.
Then, to examine the main effect of inclusive leadership on employee work engagement
(hypothesis 1), the relationship between inclusive leadership and person-job fit (hypothesis 2),
the indirect effect of inclusive leadership on employee work engagement via person-job fit
(hypothesis 3) and the moderation effect of felt responsibility on the relationship between
inclusive leadership and person-job fit (hypothesis 4), a series of hierarchical multiple
regression analyses were carried out using the PROCESS macro (Hayes, 2017). Finally, we
deployed a bootstrap approach using the PROCESS macro (Hayes, 2017) with 5,000
bootstraps resamples to further validate the mediating effect.

Results
Confirmatory factor analyses
We conducted a confirmatory factor analysis to test the anticipated factor structure
underlying the data using Mplus 7. The results (seen in Table 2) showed that the
hypothesized four-factor model had a significantly better fit to the data (χ 2/df 5 2.52,
CFI 5 0.92, TLI 5 0.91, SRMR 5 0.058, RMSEA 5 0.076) than any of the alternative models

Measurement models χ2 df χ 2/df CFI TLI SRMR RMSEA

Four-factor model (IL, PJ, FR, WE) 663.55 263 2.52 0.92 0.91 0.058 0.076
Three-factor model (IL, PJ þ FR, WE) 1,111.29 266 4.18 0.84 0.82 0.099 0.110
Three-factor model (IL þ FR, PJ, WE) 1,205.56 269 4.48 0.82 0.80 0.094 0.115
Three-factor model (IL þ PJ, FR, WE) 1,327.34 269 4.93 0.80 0.77 0.120 0.123
Two-factor model (IL þ PJ þ FR, WE) 1703.57 271 6.29 0.72 0.69 0.136 0.142
Single-factor model (IL þ PJ þ FR þ WE) 3271.24 275 11.90 0.42 0.37 0.197 0.204
Note(s): N 5 261; CFI 5 comparative fit index, TLI 5 Tucker–Lewis index, SRMR 5 standardized root-mean- Table 2.
square residual, RMSEA 5 root mean squared error of approximation. IL 5 inclusive leadership, PJ 5 person- Results for CFAs and
job fit, FR 5 felt responsibility, WE 5 work engagement model comparisons
BJM with fewer factors, which provides support regarding the distinctiveness of the core
17,1 constructs in our study. Additionally, the standardized factor loadings of all items were above
0.60, except for one felt responsibility item (0.53, p < 0.01). The average variance extracted
(AVE) values were 0.88, 0.74, 0.58 and 0.84 (all exceeded the recommended cut-off of 0.50), and
the composite reliability values were 0.96, 0.89, 0.84 and 0.94 (all exceeded the recommended
cut-off of 0.70) for inclusive leadership, person-job fit, felt responsibility and work
engagement, respectively. All square roots of AVE values were higher than the
132 correlations between two variables, as shown in Table 3 (Fornell and Larcker, 1981).
These results demonstrate the discriminant and convergent validity of our core constructs.

Descriptive statistics
Means, standard deviations and correlations of the variables in this study are displayed in
Table 3. As expected, inclusive leadership is positively correlated with employee work
engagement (r 5 0.29, p < 0.01) and person-job fit (r 5 0.25, p < 0.01). The correlation between
person-job fit and employee work engagement is also significantly positive
(r 5 0.48, p < 0.01).

Hypothesis tests
Before conducting regression analyses, we standardized the variables, except control
variables, and created the interaction term with standardized variables to prevent the issue of
multicollinearity. The results of variance of inflation factor (VIF) analysis also revealed that
multicollinearity was not severe, since all the variables VIF values were between 1.17 and
1.43, which is much lower than the conventional cut-offs of 5–10 (Neter et al., 1989).
To test the main effect of inclusive leadership on employee work engagement (Hypothesis
1), we conducted a hierarchical multiple regression analysis with SPSS 22. First, work
engagement was set as the criterion variable. Then we entered the employees’ demographic
information and, finally, included inclusive leadership. The results summarized in Table 4
show that inclusive leadership is positively related to employee work engagement (Model 4,
β 5 0.33, p < 0.001), providing support for hypothesis 1.
Hierarchical multiple regression analyses were also conducted to test hypothesis 2 and
hypothesis 3. We first regressed person-job fit on inclusive leadership as the independent
variable. As shown in Table 4, the results indicate that inclusive leadership has a significant
positive impact on person-job fit after controlling for the demographic characteristics (Model
1, β 5 0.29, p < 0.001), thus hypothesis 2 is supported. We then regressed work engagement
on inclusive leadership and person-job fit simultaneously. The results show that the
coefficients of inclusive leadership and person-job fit are both significantly positive (Model 5,
β 5 0.22, p < 0.001; β 5 0.40, p < 0.001). The findings indicate that inclusive leadership has a
partial indirect effect on employee work engagement through person-job fit. To further verify
hypothesis 3, we employed the bootstrap method to test the indirect effect using the
PROCESS macro (Hayes, 2017). The 95% CI (confidence interval) for the indirect effect of
inclusive leadership on employee work engagement through person-job fit excludes zero
[0.06, 0.18]. Therefore, hypothesis 3 is supported.
Hypothesis 4 predicts that employee felt responsibility has a moderating effect on the
relationship between inclusive leadership and person-job fit. The interaction obtained by the
product of inclusive leadership and felt responsibility was used to test the hypothesis. As
expected, the results displayed in Table 4 demonstrate that the interaction is significant and
positive (M2, β 5 0.16, p < 0.05). Therefore, hypothesis 4 is supported. To examine the
moderating effect more clearly, we plotted the interaction at the values of high (mean þ 1SD)
and low (mean – 1SD) levels of felt responsibility in Figure 2 (Aiken et al., 1991). Consistent
with the hypothesis, the positive association between inclusive leadership and person-job fit
Variables Mean S.D 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

1. Gender 1.44 0.50

2. Age 1.51 0.94 0.14*
3. Education 2.44 0.06 0.01 0.23**
4. Tenure 1.51 1.03 0.14* 0.79** 0.25**
5. Industry 3.13 1.59 0.08 0.15* 0.10 0.07
6. Size 4.09 1.91 0.02 0.14* 0.20** 0.08 0.13*
7. Inclusive leadership 5.38 1.16 0.03 0.12 0.03 0.09 0.01 0.11 0.94
8. Felt responsibility 6.12 0.71 0.05 0.18** 0.10 0.18** 0.07 0.03 0.36** 0.76
9. Person-job fit 4.53 1.33 0.07 0.16** 0.04 0.08 0.05 0.02 0.25** 0.31** 0.86
10. Work engagement 4.40 1.10 0.10 0.25** 0.12 0.24** 0.02 0.07 0.29** 0.28** 0.48** 0.92
Note(s): N 5 261; diagonal elements are the square root of AVE, whereas off-diagonal values are inter-construct correlations; *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01
engagement

133
Leadership and
employee work

correlations, and
discriminant validity
Descriptive statistics,
Table 3.

analysis
BJM Person-job fit (M1–M2) Work engagement (M3–M5)
17,1 Variables Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Model 5

Control variable
Gender 0.03 0.07 0.05 0.03 0.02
Age 0.32*** 0.28 0.18 0.24* 0.11
Education 0.02 0.01 0.20** 0.21** 0.21***
134 Tenure 0.15 0.16 0.12 0.12 0.18*
Sector 0.01 0.02 0.01 0.00 0.01
Size 0.09 0.08 0.07 0.03 0.07
Independent variable
Inclusive leadership 0.29*** 0.15* 0.33*** 0.22***
Mediator
Person-job fit 0.40***
Moderator
Felt responsibility 0.29**
Interaction
Inclusive leadership 3 felt responsibility 0.16*
F 4.80*** 6.07*** 4.96*** 9.72*** 17.27***
Table 4. R2 0.12 0.18 0.11 0.21 0.35
Results for the ΔR2 0.06 0.10 0.14
regression analysis Note(s): Standardized beta is reported; *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001

Figure 2.
Moderating effect of
felt responsibility

is significant when an employee’s felt responsibility is high (simple slope 5 0.30, p < 0.001)
but nonsignificant when it is low (simple slope 5 0.00, p > 0.05).

Discussion and conclusions

The current research investigated the relationships among inclusive leadership, person-job
fit and employee work engagement. Proposing a moderated mediation model, this study
found that inclusive leadership is positively related to employee work engagement via
person-job fit. Additionally, the direct effect of inclusive leadership on person-job fit and the
indirect effect on work engagement are only significant when employees feel a high level of
personal responsibility for their work.
Theoretical implications Leadership and
Our study makes several theoretical contributions to inclusive leadership theory and employee work
research. First, this study enriches the theoretical perspective of inclusive leadership
research. Previous studies that theorized the link between inclusive leadership and employee
engagement
work engagement have commonly relied on social exchange theory. This study contributes to
inclusive leadership research by integrating social information processing theory and
person-environment fit theory to theorize the relationship between inclusive leadership and
work engagement mediated by perceived person-job fit. The integration of these two theories 135
provides an additional theoretical lens explaining the association between inclusive
leadership and employee work engagement and enriches the theoretical foundation of
inclusive leadership scholarship.
Second, the study deepens our understanding of the underlying mechanisms of the effect
of inclusive leadership on employee work engagement by identifying person-job fit as a
mediator. Few studies have examined the mechanisms underlying the relationship between
inclusive leadership and employee work engagement. In addition, these few studies have
focused on either individual attribute mediators or organizational characteristic mediators,
while neglecting an important potential mediator aspect regarding the interaction of
individual attributes and organizational characteristics, such as the employee’s perceived
congruence or fit between him/herself and the environment. This study fills the gap by
identifying employee perceived person-job fit, a specific form of person-environment fit, as a
mediator, and provides theoretical and empirical evidence that person-job fit plays a critical
role in linking inclusive leadership and work engagement. In doing so, this study further
helps to unpack the “black box” of the relationship between inclusive leadership and
employee work engagement.
Third, this study clarifies the boundary conditions for the positive impact of inclusive
leadership on work engagement by investigating employees’ felt responsibility as a moderator.
Although most existing research on inclusive leadership has examined relationships between
inclusive leadership and positive employee outcomes, such as employee work engagement,
some scholars have found opposing or null results (Zheng et al., 2018). These contradicting
results call for future studies to further examine the boundary conditions of inclusive leadership
effectiveness. This study helps to reconcile these inconsistent findings by exploring the
moderating effect of employees’ felt responsibility and finds that the direct effect of inclusive
leadership on person-job fit and the indirect effect on work engagement through person-job fit
are only significant when employees experience a high sense of responsibility for their work.
These findings support the view that the positive impact of inclusive leadership is unlikely to be
universal and extends our understanding of inclusive leadership effectiveness.

Practical implications
In terms of practical implications for practitioners and managers, our research demonstrates
that inclusive leadership has a positive effect on employee work engagement, but that this
effect manifests itself only under specific conditions. The leadership style appears to be
effective in driving employees to achieve a better person-job fit, and, in turn, to enhance their
engagement in work, but only when the employees feel personally responsible and
accountable for their work. This finding suggests that inclusive leaders should pay more
attention to their followers’ work-related psychological conditions, as low felt responsibility
can hinder the inclusive leaders’ ability to encourage their employees. We recommend that
leaders proactively take measures to develop the responsibility that employees feel for their
work, such as providing substantial freedom and discretion to the followers in scheduling
their work and in determining the procedures to be used in carrying out their work (Oldham
and Hackman, 2010).
BJM This research also suggests that organizations should promote and develop inclusive
17,1 leaders in the workplace to facilitate employees’ person-job fit and encourage work
engagement. Although employees can fit their abilities with the job requirements following
the formal job descriptions, leaders also shape and change employees’ person-job fit
perceptions through their direct interactions with employees, which is especially important in
today’s uncertain and fast-changing environment (Chi and Pan, 2012). By developing leaders’
inclusive leadership abilities, organizations can improve the fit between the job demands and
136 employee abilities in the workplace and benefit from the enhanced employee work
engagement. Accordingly, special training programs and leadership development programs
could be designed to help leaders master inclusive managerial practices and cultivate
inclusive leadership. For instance, practices such as mentoring and coaching could be useful
for leaders to develop an inclusive leadership style (Booysen, 2013).

Limitations and future research directions

Despite its implications, there are several limitations to this study that call for future
investigations. First, although a two-wave survey design was used to minimize the common
method bias (Podsakoff et al., 2003), we acknowledge that the issue may still exist and
constrain our causal explanation since our data were collected from a single source (the
employee). Thus, studies collecting longitudinal data from different sources or experimental
designs are desirable in the future, to further examine the causal relationships between
inclusive leadership and work engagement. Second, because of resource limitations, the data
were collected from a convenience sample of companies, and this may limit the
generalizability of the conclusions. Future studies collecting data from a random or
stratified sample of employees in companies are called for. Third, since our focus in this study
is on the examination of the relationship between inclusive leadership and work engagement,
other related leadership styles, such as transformational leadership and empowering
leadership, have been left out of consideration. To better examine the unique effect of
inclusive leadership and to enhance the robustness of the results, future studies should
include other leadership styles as controls. Fourth, this study only accounted for the
mediating role of perceived person-job fit in linking inclusive leadership and work
engagement. Other mediation mechanisms need to be further explored (e.g. person-
supervisor fit) in future studies. Furthermore, future studies should continue to investigate
situational factors on the influence process of inclusive leadership, such as other personal
characteristics (e.g. employee emotional exhaustion) or job characteristics (e.g. job
autonomy).

Conclusion
This study contributes to inclusive leadership scholarship by showing that inclusive
leadership exerts a strong positive impact on employee work engagement, via person-job fit
perceptions. However, these positive effects of inclusive leaders are only significant when
employees have a high sense of responsibility for their work and work outcomes.

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Corresponding author
Zengrui Xiao can be contacted at: xiaozengrui@zstu.edu.cn

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