TYPE Systematic Review

PUBLISHED 12 August 2022

DOI 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.941161

A meta-analysis of leadership
OPEN ACCESS and intrinsic motivation:
Examining relative importance
EDITED BY
Massimiliano Barattucci,
University of Bergamo, Italy

REVIEWED BY
Matthias Weiss,
and moderators
Ruhr University Bochum, Germany
Andrés Salas-Vallina,
University of Valencia, Spain Hanbing Xue1 , Yifei Luo1 , Yuxiang Luan1 and Nan Wang2*
*CORRESPONDENCE 1
School of Labor and Human Resources, Renmin University of China, Beijing, China, 2 School of
Nan Wang
Business, North Minzu University, Yinchuan, China
wang_nan@nun.edu.cn

SPECIALTY SECTION
This article was submitted to
Organizational Psychology,
This paper provides the first meta-analytic examination of the relationship
a section of the journal between leadership and followers’ intrinsic motivation. In particular, we
Frontiers in Psychology examined 6 leadership variables (transformational, ethical, leader-member
RECEIVED 11 May 2022 exchange, servant, empowering, and abusive supervision) using data from 50
ACCEPTED 18 July 2022
PUBLISHED 12 August 2022
independent samples and 21,873 participants. We found that transformational
leadership, ethical leadership, leader-member exchange (LMX), servant
CITATION
Xue H, Luo Y, Luan Y and Wang N leadership, and empowering leadership were positively related to intrinsic
(2022) A meta-analysis of leadership motivation, whereas abusive supervision was negatively linked to intrinsic
and intrinsic motivation: Examining
relative importance and moderators. motivation. Although these leadership styles were associated with intrinsic
Front. Psychol. 13:941161. motivation, they varied considerably in their relative importance. Empowering,
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.941161
ethical, and servant leadership emerged as the more important contributors
COPYRIGHT to intrinsic motivation than transformational leadership. LMX showed a
© 2022 Xue, Luo, Luan and Wang. This
is an open-access article distributed similar contribution with transformational leadership to intrinsic motivation.
under the terms of the Creative Effectiveness of leadership styles in relation to intrinsic motivation varied by
Commons Attribution License (CC BY).
power distance, publication year, and journal quality. Drawing on our findings,
The use, distribution or reproduction
in other forums is permitted, provided we discuss the theoretical and practice implications.
the original author(s) and the copyright
owner(s) are credited and that the
KEYWORDS
original publication in this journal is
cited, in accordance with accepted leadership, intrinsic motivation, self-determination theory, meta-analysis,
academic practice. No use, distribution transformational leadership
or reproduction is permitted which
does not comply with these terms.

Introduction
About a half-century ago, Deci (1971) found external reward would undermine
intrinsic motivation and published his well-known paper about intrinsic motivation. He
aroused people’s great interest (intrinsic motivation) in studying intrinsic motivation.
Since then, intrinsic motivation, which refers to doing something because it is
inherently interesting or enjoyable (Ryan and Deci, 2000a; Sheldon and Prentice,
2019), has drawn so much academic attention. In the workplace, when employees
are intrinsically motivated, they are likely to achieve high-quality performance (Deci
et al., 2017). For example, meta-analyses provided solid evidence that intrinsic
motivation is strongly and positively related to creativity (de Jesus et al., 2013)
and work performance (Cerasoli et al., 2014). Besides, experiments showed

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that intrinsic motivation influences individuals’ psychological Theoretical background and

wellbeing (Burton et al., 2006). hypotheses development
Given the importance of intrinsic motivation in work,
not surprisingly, scholars, and managers are seeking the Leadership and intrinsic motivation
answers to the following question: what factors could influence
intrinsic motivation? Drawing on self-determination theory In the current study, we research the links between six
(SDT) (Deci and Ryan, 2000; Gagné and Deci, 2005), types of leadership and intrinsic motivation. We focus on
motivation would be influenced by contextual factors. As these six types of leadership (rather than other leadership) for
such, scholars try to detect the contextual antecedents three reasons. First, a recent review of SDT (Deci et al., 2017)
of intrinsic motivation. Leadership is an important factor suggested that transformational leadership would influence
that would influence employees’ wellbeing (Salas-Vallina and their followers’ intrinsic motivation. As such, transformational
Alegre, 2018) and intrinsic motivation (Deci et al., 2017). leadership should be taken into consideration. Deci et al.
Although fruitful evidence between leadership and intrinsic (2017) also suggested researching other types of leadership and
motivation has been accumulated, some unsolved issues their relations with motivation. Second, based on leadership
still exist. literature, meta-analyses about leadership and creativity (Lee
First, true population correlations between leadership et al., 2020a) and engagement (Li et al., 2021) consider these
styles and intrinsic motivation have not been evaluated yet. types of leadership. That is to say, these leadership styles capture
Primary studies would suffer from statistical artifacts and scholars’ research interest to some extent. Finally, to accurately
thereby conclude different correlations of interest (Hunter estimate the links between leadership and intrinsic motivation,
and Schmidt, 2004). For example, for the association between the leadership style should include more than 3 primary studies.
transformational leadership and intrinsic motivation, Nguyen As such, we include leadership styles that have more than 3
et al. (2022) found a small magnitude of the effect size primary studies. We present their definitions in Table 1.
(r = 0.03), while Al Harbi et al. (2019) found a medium To start, we would like to briefly introduce intrinsic
one (r = 0.30). Fortunately, meta-analysis methodology could motivation. Intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation have
help us to correct the statistical artifacts and estimate the been widely studied. Extrinsically motivated behaviors are
true population correlations of interest. As such, in the “governed by the prospect of instrumental gain and loss
current study, we will evaluate the links between intrinsic (e.g., incentives), whereas intrinsically motivated behaviors are
motivation and various leadership styles (i.e., transformational, engaged for their very own sake (e.g., task enjoyment), not
ethical, servant, empowering, LMX, and abusive supervision). being instrumental toward some other outcome” (Cerasoli et al.,
By doing so, we seek to contribute to leadership and 2014, p. 1). This definition of intrinsic motivation has been
motivation literature. widely accepted in meta-analyses (e.g., Deci et al., 1999; Patall
Second, the relative importance of leadership to intrinsic et al., 2008; Cerasoli et al., 2014). Beyond enjoyment-based
motivation is not clear. Following early meta-analyses intrinsic motivation, individuals also are likely to be intrinsically
(Hoch et al., 2018; Lee et al., 2020a,b), we will compare motivated by obligation. That is, obligation-based intrinsic
the relative importance of transformational leadership motivation (to meet the morals, values. and ethics dictated by
and other types of leadership in the current study. This an individual) may exist (Li et al., 2012). This study focus on
effort would not only enrich our understanding of the enjoyment-based intrinsic motivation.
relationship between leadership and intrinsic motivation We apply SDT to develop the links between leadership and
but also provide meaningful management suggestions for intrinsic motivation. Drawing on SDT, all human beings have
managers. For instance, to increase followers’ intrinsic three basic psychological needs, namely, needs for competence,
motivation, managers can use suitable leadership according to autonomy, and relatedness (Ryan and Deci, 2000b; Gagné and
our meta-analytic results. Deci, 2005; Deci and Ryan, 2014). The need for autonomy
Finally, the potential moderators of the relationship between reflects the need to be the origin of their own behaviors
leadership and intrinsic motivation have not been detected yet. and choices; the need for competence reflects the need to be
For instance, a previous meta-analysis (Lee et al., 2020b) found competent, effective, and masterful; and the need for relatedness
that correlations of interest are higher when using a common reflects the need to feel a sense of meaningful connection with
source research design. In this study, we will detect five potential at least some other people (Sheldon and Prentice, 2019). SDT
moderators. That is publication year, source (common source argues that social contexts that satisfy these needs would increase
vs. non-common source), power distance, individualism, and intrinsic motivation (Deci and Ryan, 2000; Ryan and Deci,
quality of the journal. 2000b).

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TABLE 1 Leadership definition.

Leadership Definition

Transformational leadership Transformational leadership refers to “the leader moving the follower beyond immediate self-interests through idealized
influence (charisma), inspiration, intellectual stimulation, or individualized consideration” ((Bass, 1999), p. 11).
Servant leadership Eva et al. (2019) defined servant leadership as leadership that “(1) other-oriented approach to leadership (2) manifested
through one-on-one prioritizing of follower individual needs and interests, (3) and outward reorienting of their concern
for self toward concern for other within the organization and the larger community” (Eva et al., 2019, p. 114).
LMX LMX reflects the exchange quality between leaders and their followers. “Low LMX relationships are characterized by
economic exchange based on formally agreed on, immediate, and balanced reciprocation of tangible assets, such as
employment contracts focusing on pay for performance; high-LMX relationships increasingly engender feelings of
mutual obligation and reciprocity” (Dulebohn et al., 2012, p. 1,717).
Empowering leadership Empowering leadership is “the process of influencing subordinates through power sharing, motivation support, and
development support with intent to promote their experience of self-reliance, motivation, and capability to work
autonomously within the boundaries of overall organizational goals and strategies” (Amundsen and Martinsen, 2014, p.
490).
Ethical leadership Ethical leadership is defined as “the demonstration of normatively appropriate conduct through personal actions and
interpersonal relationships, and the promotion of such conduct to followers through two-way communication,
reinforcement, and decision-making” (Brown et al., 2005, p. 120).
Abusive supervision Abusive supervision refers to “subordinates’ perceptions of the extent to which supervisors engage in the sustained display
of hostile verbal and non-verbal behaviors, excluding physical contact” (Tepper, 2000, p. 178).

Based on SDT, leadership would influence basic 2006), which would help them to build positive relationships
psychological needs, thus activating intrinsic motivation. with their employees, satisfying their followers’ need for
First, transformational leaders use intellectual stimulation the relatedness.
and individualized consideration to influence their followers. Together, transformational leadership, servant leadership,
Intellectual stimulation would make their followers innovative, empowering leadership, LMX, and ethical leadership would
while individual consideration would meet their developmental satisfy their followers’ need for relatedness. According to SDT,
needs (Bass, 1999). Positive leadership behaviors (i.e., when psychological need is satisfied, individuals would be
intellectual stimulation and individual consideration) motivated intrinsically (Ryan and Deci, 2000b). Besides, early
would allow transformational leaders to build a positive studies found that transformational leadership (Al Harbi et al.,
relationship with their followers and satisfy their followers’ 2019; Mahmood et al., 2019), servant leadership (Kong et al.,
need for relatedness. Second, empowering leaders use multiple 2017; Su et al., 2020), empowering leadership (Byun et al.,
behaviors to support their followers’ autonomy. For instance, 2016; Ju et al., 2019), LMX (Piccolo and Colquitt, 2006;
empowering leaders share power with their followers, support Xie et al., 2020), and ethical leadership (Yidong and Xinxin,
subordinates’ motivation to work autonomously, and promote 2012; Potipiroon and Ford, 2017) are positively related to
subordinates’ learning and development in their work roles intrinsic motivation.
(Amundsen and Martinsen, 2014). By doing so, empowering Hypothesis 1: Transformational leadership (a), servant
leaders are likely to build a positive association with their leadership (b), empowering leadership (c), ethical leadership (d),
followers and thereby satisfy the need for relatedness. Third, and LMX (e) will positively relate to intrinsic motivation.
servant leaders empower their followers. They encourage and Abusive supervision may harm their relationships with
facilitate their followers, in identifying and solving problems, their followers through their abusive behavior. For example,
and determining when and how to complete work tasks they ridicule their followers and invade their followers’ privacy
(Liden et al., 2008). As such, servant leaders are likely to (Tepper, 2000). Drawing on SDT (Deci and Ryan, 2000), abusive
build positive relationships with their followers, fulfilling the supervision would undermine the need for relatedness and
need for relatedness. Fourth, with a high quality of LMX, thereby decrease their followers’ intrinsic motivation. Previous
employees are likely to have a social exchange relationship studies found that abusive supervision is negatively linked to
including trust, loyalty, and commitment with their leaders intrinsic motivation (Hussain et al., 2020; Onaran and Göncü-
(Dulebohn et al., 2012), satisfying the need for relatedness. Köse, 2022).
Finally, ethical leaders show their honesty and trustworthiness Hypothesis 2: Abusive supervision will negatively relate to
to their followers and care for them (Brown and Treviño, intrinsic motivation.

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Relative importance of leadership necessary in the organization, punishment is a kind of control

that might undermine autonomy. Punishment is a kind of
Although five positive leadership styles may positively relate behavior in transactional leaders rather than transformational
to intrinsic motivation, it is unclear what kinds of leadership leaders (Bass, 1999). Thus, transformational leadership might
contribute more variance to intrinsic motivation. Based on the undermine less autonomy than ethical leadership, contributing
need for relatedness, we could not explain which leadership more variance to intrinsic motivation.
styles might promote more intrinsic motivation. Fortunately, Fourth, LMX is a form of relational leadership (Liden
SDT is a very grand theory that includes many mini-theories, and Maslyn, 1998). It does not emphasize empowerment or
based on the organismic integration mini-theory, we try to control. Drawing on SDT, it is quite hard to predict its relative
explain the different impacts of leadership styles on intrinsic importance to intrinsic motivation relative to transformational
motivation. Besides, it seems very hard to compare all leadership leadership. Although SDT could help us to illustrate the relative
together. As such, following early studies (Hoch et al., 2018; Lee importance of leadership styles to some extent, similarities
et al., 2020a), we use transformational leadership as a benchmark of concepts between leadership styles may limit us accurately
and then compare other leadership with it. predicting which leadership styles will contribute a larger part
The organismic integration mini-theory argues all motivated of the variance. For instance, early meta-analyses found large
behaviors can be located on an underlying autonomy correlations between ethical leadership (ρ = 0.70), servant
continuum, somewhere between feeling a complete lack of leadership (ρ = 0.52), and transformational leadership. As such,
self-determined to feeling completely self-determined (Ryan we do not propose a hypothesis. Instead, we try to answer the
and Deci, 1989, 2000a). Drawing on SDT, leadership that following research question:
provides a higher level of autonomy may link to a higher level Research Question 1: Will empowering leadership (a),
of intrinsic motivation. First, compared to transformational servant leadership (b), ethical leadership (c), and LMX (d)
leadership, empowering leadership may influence motivation contribute more variance to intrinsic motivation relative to
that is more autonomous. In particular, transformational transformational leadership?
leaders may not empower their followers in some situations.
For instance, Sharma and Kirkman (2015) argued that leaders
may exhibit transformational behavior without actually
Moderators of leadership–intrinsic
transferring much control or power to their followers.
However, empowering leaders encourages independence and
motivation
autonomy (Amundsen and Martinsen, 2014). In other words,
We choose two cultural dimensions as moderators for two
transformational leadership may undermine autonomy in some
reasons. The first one is that SDT literature (e.g., Chirkov
situations while empowering leaders may not. Drawing on
et al., 2003; Church et al., 2013; Deci et al., 2017) focus on
SDT, the motivation influenced by empowering leadership
individualism and power distance. By researching these two
rather than transformation leadership is more closed to
moderators, we could contribute to SDT literature. The second
intrinsic motivation. As such, empowering leadership may
one is that prior meta-analyses about leadership (e.g., Lee et al.,
contribute a larger variance to intrinsic motivation than
2020a,b) focus on individualism and power distance, suggesting
transformational leadership.
these two moderators are very important in leadership literature.
Second, servant leadership may influence a higher degree
of autonomous motivation than transformational leadership.
Servant leaders’ primary focus is on their followers, while
transformational leaders primarily focus on organizational Power distance
objectives (Hoch et al., 2018). As such, servant leaders Early meta-analyses (Lee et al., 2020a; Li et al., 2021) have
would consider more interests of their followers and provide found power distance has a moderating effect on leadership
more autonomy to their followers than transformational effectiveness. Power distance reflects “the extent to which
leaders. Besides, the measure of servant leadership includes a society accepts the fact that power in institutions and
empowerment (e.g., Liden et al., 2015), while empowerment was organizations is distributed unequally” (Hofstede, 1980, p. 45).
removed in the recent measure of transformational leadership Employees who are in a society with a high-power distance
(Bass, 1999). Together, compared to transformation leadership, orientation expect direction from their leaders (Javidan et al.,
servant leadership may provide more autonomy to their 2006). As such, leadership may have a stronger influence on
followers, contributing more variance to intrinsic motivation. employees in a high power distance country. That is, the
Third, ethical leadership may influence a lower degree of association between leadership and intrinsic motivation will be
autonomous motivation relative to transformational leadership. stronger in a country with a higher power distance.
The ethical leader would punish their followers who violate Hypothesis 3: Power distance moderates the association
ethical standards (Brown et al., 2005). Although punishment is between leadership and intrinsic motivation. In particular, the

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effect size will be higher when the sample comes from a country paradigm), we want to know if the publication year moderates
with a higher power distance. the effect sizes.
Research Question 3: Does publication year moderate the
links between leadership and intrinsic motivation?
Individualism
Individualism implies “a loosely knit social framework in
which people are supposed to take care of themselves and
of their immediate families only” (Hofstede, 1980, p. 45). Methods
According to SDT, although all human beings have three basic
psychological needs (Deci and Ryan, 2000), individuals vary in This research used multiple strategies to identify studies
internalizing the influence of the environment. In the workplace, that include relationships between leadership and intrinsic
the degree of internalization of leaders’ influence varies in motivation. In particular, searches were conducted in the
different cultures. Internalization is relatively low in cultures following databases in March 2022: PsycINFO and Web of
with high individualism (Chirkov et al., 2003). In other words, Science. We used the following keywords: leadership and
when samples from a country with a higher individualism level, intrinsic motivation.
the impact of leadership would be weaker.
Hypothesis 4: Individualism moderates the association
between leadership and intrinsic motivation. In particular, the
effect size will be lower when the sample comes from a country Inclusion criteria and coding
with a higher individualism.
We employed several criteria to determine whether to
include studies in our analyses. First, the study should be an
Source empirical study that includes correlation(s). For instance, the
When a study uses common source data, namely, qualitative review was removed because it does not provide a
independent and dependent variables are collected from a correlation. Second, studies should be written in English. Third,
single time point, correlations are likely to inflate due to the sample should come from the workplace. For example,
common method bias (Podsakoff et al., 2003). In contrast, student and athlete samples were removed. Finally, leadership
using non-common source data may decrease the influence of types should be one of the six we mentioned. In the coding
common method bias to some extent. Previous meta-analyses process, we noticed some leadership styles have few studies (k
(Lee et al., 2020a,b) found that correlations are higher when < 3). As such, these studies were excluded. To illustrate our
using common source data. research process, the PRISMA flowchart is presented in Figure 1.
Hypothesis 5: Source the association between leadership and Two of our authors coded the following information:
intrinsic motivation. In particular, the effect size will be higher bibliographic references (authors and publication year), sample
when the study uses common source data. description (sample size and country), research design/sampling
strategy, effect sizes (correlations), and the reliabilities of all
scales. For studies with multiple indicators of a focal construct,
Journal quality we averaged them (Hunter and Schmidt, 2004; Hoch et al.,
The peer-review process for a paper published in a higher- 2018). For example, when one study did not report an overall
quality journal is generally more rigorous. A rigorous peer- correlation between leadership and motivation, but only the
review process may influence the quality of data. That is, in a correlations between dimensions of leadership and motivation,
high-level quality journal, data are likely to have higher quality we averaged these correlations to evaluate an overall correlation.
than in a relatively lower-level quality journal. For instance,
papers published in the Journal of Applied Psychology (SSCI Q1)
are more likely to have a higher quality of data than in a journal
that was included in SSCI Q4. We want to know whether the Analyses
journal quality would influence the correlations of interest.
Research Question 2: Does journal quality moderate the We applied the Hunter-Schmidt method’s meta-analysis
links between leadership and intrinsic motivation? methodology to correct sampling error and measurement error
(Hunter and Schmidt, 2004). In particular, the measurement
error was corrected by reliability individually. Cronbach’s α
Publication year was employed as the reliability. The details of reliability were
Since papers published in different years might be influenced shown in Table 2. The sampling error was corrected by the
by many factors (e.g., economic conditions and research random-effect model. Meta-analysis was performed using the

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FIGURE 1
PRISMA flowchart.

psychmeta package (Dahlke and Wiernik, 2019) in R. The results Journal quality was coded according to the journal rank. For
of meta-analysis were shown in Table 3. instance, if one paper is published in SSCI Q4, it would
Following the guidance by Tonidandel and LeBreton be coded as 4; if one paper is published in SSCI Q1, it
(2011), we conducted a relative importance analysis. would be coded as 1. The regression was accomplished using
We built a meta-analytic correlation matrix for the metafor (Viechtbauer, 2010) package in R. In particular, we
relative importance analysis (see Table 4). Then, we employed a random-effect model and regarded Restricted
applied RWA Web (Tonidandel and LeBreton, 2015) Maximum Likelihood (REML) method as an estimator to
to accomplish this analysis. The results was provided in conduct our meta-regression. The results were presented in
Table 5. Table 6.
We employed meta-regression to detect the potential Finally, publication bias occurs because statistically
moderating effects of power distance, individualism, source, significant results are published more frequently than
journal quality, and publication year. The index of power studies without significant results (Rothstein et al.,
distance and individualism was extracted from Hofstede’s 2005). To ensure the robustness of the current study, we
website (www.geerthofstede.com). Source was coded as a applied the trim-and-fill method (Duval and Tweedie,
dummy variable. In particular, “common source” was coded 2000) and Eggs’ regression to detect publication bias (see
as “0,” while “non-common source” was coded as “1.” Table 7).

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TABLE 2 Cronbach’s α reliabilities of the current study.

Variable Number of α Average of α Maximum α Minimum α Sample size weighted average of α

Intrinsic motivation 54 0.85 0.98 0.68 0.85

Abusive supervision 5 0.89 0.94 0.76 0.89
Empowering leadership 4 0.89 0.96 0.82 0.94
Ethical leadership 6 0.83 0.95 0.71 0.91
LMX 6 0.81 0.96 0.68 0.83
Servant leadership 4 0.9 0.80 0.85 0.88
Transformational leadership 29 0.85 0.68 0.85 0.90

TABLE 3 Bivariate relationships between leadership and intrinsic motivation.

variable k n r ρ SDρ 95% CI 80% CR

Abusive supervision 5 1561 −0.36 −0.42 0.05 [−0.51, −0.32] [−0.49, −0.34]
Empowering leadership 4 4614 0.40 0.45 0.09 [0.29, 0.60] [0.30, 0.60]
Ethical leadership 6 1725 0.43 0.49 0.24 [0.23, 0.74] [0.14, 0.84]
LMX 6 3179 0.30 0.37 0.11 [0.25, 0.50] [0.21, 0.53]
Servant leadership 4 1315 0.42 0.49 0.19 [0.17, 0.81] [0.17, 0.80]
Transformational Leadership 29 9852 0.32 0.37 0.2 [0.29, 0.45] [0.10, 0.63]

k, number of studies; n, total sample size in the meta-analysis; r, uncorrected effect size; ρ, corrected effect size; SDρ, standard deviation of the corrected effect size; CI, confidence interval;
CV, credibility interval.

Results between servant leadership and intrinsic motivation became

smaller when power distance became larger. These results
As shown in Table 3, we find that abusive supervision (ρ answer RQ 3. Therefore, H4 and H5 were rejected, while H3 was
= −0.42, 95%CI = [−0.51, −0.32]) is negatively related to accepted partly.
intrinsic motivation. Transformational leadership (ρ = 0.37, Finally, as depicted in Table 7, the overall publication is
95%CI = [0.29, 0.45]), ethical leadership (ρ = 0.49, 95%CI = not serious. First, drawing on Egg’s regression method, among
[0.23, 0.74]), servant leadership (ρ = 0.49, 95%CI = [0.17, 0.81]), six leadership styles, all the p-value is bigger than 0.050,
empowering leadership (ρ = 0.45, 95%CI = [0.29, 0.60]), and suggesting publication bias is not series. Second, the Trim-and-
LMX (ρ = 0.37, 95%CI = [0.25, 0.50]) are positively related to Fill method helps to fill asymmetric effect sizes and provides an
intrinsic motivation. Thus, H1 (a), H1 (b), H1 (c), H1 (d), H1 adjusted overall effect size. In terms of empowering leadership,
(e), and H2 are accepted. LMX, servant leadership, and transformational leadership,
As presented in Table 5, empowering leadership (65.54%) no asymmetric effect sizes were found. Regarding abusive
played a more important role in explaining intrinsic motivation supervision, effect size only changes by 0.01 after adjusting
than transformational leadership (34.46%). Similarly, ethical asymmetric effect sizes. For ethical leadership, effect size only
leadership (71.36%) explained a larger portion of the variance changes by 0.03 after adjusting asymmetric effect sizes. Together,
than transformational leadership (28.64%). LMX (49.76%) and we did not find large changes after using the Trim-and-Fill
transformational leadership (50.24%) played a similar role in method, confirming the robustness of the current meta-analysis.
explaining intrinsic motivation. Servant leadership (69.98%)
played a more important role than transformational leadership
(30.02%). Together, RQ1 was answered. Discussion
As illustrated in Table 4, we did not find evidence that
supports the moderating effects of individualism and source. Given the importance of intrinsic motivation in work, it
Regarding publication year, we found that the links between is critical to understand the leadership–intrinsic motivation
ethical (servant) leadership and intrinsic motivation were larger association. This study aimed to contribute to the leadership and
when the publication year was larger. Interestingly, for abusive intrinsic motivation literature by estimating the true population
supervision and empowering leadership, the correlation became correlations between leadership styles and intrinsic motivation,
larger as the journal quality became lower. These results answer comparing the relative importance of leadership to intrinsic
RQ 2. In terms of power distance, we noticed that the correlation motivation, and detecting the potential moderators of the

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TABLE 4 Meta-analytic correlation matrix.

Variable Intrinsic Transformational Empowering Ethical LMX Servant

motivation leadership leadership leadership leadership

Intrinsic motivation 1 0.37 0.45 0.49 0.37 0.49

k (n) - 29 (9,852) 4 (4,614) 6 (1,725) 6 (3,179) 4 (1,315)
Transformational leadership - 1 0.67b 0.7a 0.71a 0.52a
k (n) - - 5 (1,721) 20 (3,717) 20 (4,591) 5 (774)

Unless stated, meta-analytic correlations were calculated by authors.

a Hoch et al., 2018; b Lee et al., 2018.

TABLE 5 Relative weights analysis.

Variable Raw relative weights Rescaled Relative weights % R-square

Transformational leadership 0.07 34.46 0.21

Empowering leadership 0.14 65.54
Transformational leadership 0.07 28.64 0.24
Ethical Leadership 0.17 71.36
Transformational leadership 0.08 50.24 0.16
LMX 0.08 49.76
Transformational leadership 0.08 30.02 0.26
Servant leadership 0.18 69.98

relationship between leadership and intrinsic motivation. We leadership and LMX literature. In the relationship between
discuss our findings in relation to our three key aims. transformational leadership and intrinsic motivation, we noticed
that one study (Li et al., 2012) measured intrinsic motivation
using the obligation-based measure. We conducted a sensitivity
True population correlations analysis (leave-one-out analysis) to detect whether the measure
of intrinsic motivation would influence the robustness of
Cohen (2013) provided a standard to understand the the results. We found that k changed from 29 to 28
magnitude of correlations. That is, small effect sizes are and n changed from 9,852 to 9,734 after removing this
correlations of 0.10, moderate are 0.30, and large are 0.50. study. However, r and ρ did not change, suggesting the
We applied this standard to discuss the magnitude of effect robustness of the result. That is to say, the measure of
sizes. We found that abusive supervision (ρ = −0.42) is intrinsic motivation did not influence the robustness of
moderately and negatively related to intrinsic motivation. Early the current study. This result should be explained carefully
meta-analyses (Mackey et al., 2015; Zhang and Liao, 2015) because (a) these two kinds of definitions of intrinsic
has found abusive supervision is positively related to a series motivation are different to some extent and (b) only one
of bad consequence such as counterproductive work behavior, study may not make us capture such influence when applying
emotional exhaustion, and so on. Our study enriches the sensitivity analysis.
understanding of the negative outcomes of abusive supervision, Ethical leadership (ρ = 0.49), servant leadership (ρ =
that is, abusive supervision is negatively associated with intrinsic 0.49), and empowering leadership (ρ = 0.45) is positively
motivation. Besides, it is worth mentioning that this correlation and largely related to intrinsic motivation. Compared to
is large, indicating managers could not ignore the bad impact of transformational leadership and LMX, ethical leadership,
abusive supervision on intrinsic motivation. servant leadership, and empowering leadership are three
Transformational leadership (ρ = 0.37) and LMX (ρ = 0.37) emerging forms of positive leadership and have been
are moderately and positively related to intrinsic motivation. studied recently. The twenty-first century is the era of
These findings highlight the importance of these two leadership the knowledge economy, more and more jobs need
styles in organizations. Transformational leadership and LMX intrinsic motivation. Thus, organizations need to provide
have been researched for more than 40 years. Our meta- employees with more autonomy. Using three positive
analysis first quantitatively and accurately estimated their links leadership could be a good choice to provide autonomy
with intrinsic motivation, contributing to transformational to employees.

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TABLE 6 Moderation analyses.

Variable Moderator Estimate Z p Moderator effect present?

Abusive supervision Year 0 −0.06 0.925 No

Source 0.13 1.45 0.148 No
Quality of journal −0.05 −2.03 0.042 Yes, the lower the quality of the journal,
the larger the magnitude of correlation
Power distance 0 0.95 0.343 No
Individulism 0 0.99 0.324 No
Empowering leadership Year 0.02 0.64 0.52 No
Source 0.08 0.27 0.788 No
Quality of journal 0.15 4.82 0 Yes, the lower the quality of the journal,
the larger the magnitude of correlation
Power distance 0 −0.19 0.851 No
Individulism 0 −0.74 0.458 No
Ethical leadership Year 0.07 1.66 0.097 Yes, the larger the year, the larger the
correlation
Source 0.03 0.13 0.9 No
Quality of journal 0 0.04 0.969 No
Power distance 0 0.52 0.606 No
Individulism 0 −0.75 0.454 No
LMX Year 0.01 0.94 0.35 No
Source - - - -
Quality of journal −0.04 −0.62 0.539 No
Power distance 0 −0.12 0.907 No
Individulism 0 0.04 0.967 No
Servant leadership Year 0.13 6.51 0 Yes, the larger the year, the larger the
correlation
Source 0.06 0.19 0.853 No
Quality of journal −0.05 −0.31 0.753 No
Power distance −0.01 −1.66 0.097 Yes, the larger the power distance, the
smaller the correlation
Individulism 0 0.06 0.952 No
Transformational leadership Year 0.01 1.44 0.149 No
Source −0.08 −0.48 0.633 No
Quality of journal 0.06 1.45 0.142 No
Power distance 0 0.92 0.357 No
Individulism 0 0.04 0.967 No

Relative importance and empowering leadership is important for individuals’

intrinsic motivation.
We found that empowering and servant leadership LMX and transformational leadership had a similar role in
explain a larger variance in intrinsic motivation than explaining intrinsic motivation. Interestingly, Lee et al. (2020a)
transformational leadership. According to SDT (Deci finds LMX (ρ = 0.34) and transformational leadership (ρ =
and Ryan, 2010; Deci et al., 2017), when individuals are 0.31) have similar correlations with creativity. The theories
motivated intrinsically, they are likely to be creative and and measures of these two leadership styles are quite different.
innovative. Lee et al. (2020a) also found similar findings Perhaps they both affect the needs for relatedness, causing them
that empowering and servant leadership explain a larger to have similar effects on intrinsic motivation and creativity.
variance in creativity than transformational leadership. Transformational leadership explained less variance in
Together, our findings provide solid evidence that servant intrinsic motivation than ethical leadership, which is out of

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TABLE 7 Publication bias analysis.

Variable Trim-and-Fill Egg’s regression

Observed k Unadj. r+ Imputed k Adj. r+ Change t df p

Abusive supervision 5 −0.37 1 −0.36 0.01 0.78 3 0.495

Empowering leadership 4 0.38 0 0.38 0 −0.5 2 0.669
Ethical leadership 6 0.41 1 0.44 0.03 −2.02 4 0.114
LMX 6 0.38 0 0.38 0 2.29 4 0.084
Servant leadership 4 0.42 0 0.42 0 −1.23 2 0.345
Transformational leadership 29 0.36 0 0.36 0 1.7 27 0.101

Observed k, number of aggregated effect sizes included in analyses; Unadj. r+, unadjusted effect size estimate; imputed k, number of additional effect sizes added by trim-and-fill analyses;
Adj. r+, adjusted effect size estimate (i.e., including imputed studies).

our expectation. In our hypothesis, we believed that ethical and Ryan, 2010). However, individualism is more likely to focus
leadership may influence less autonomy than transformational on the consequence immediately (Hofstede, 1980). As such,
leadership, causing ethical leadership to contribute less variance whether in a low or high individualism country, individuals
than transformational leadership. Lee et al. (2020a) found ethical may be motivated intrinsically equally due to the enjoyment of
leadership explains a larger variance than transformational the process rather than the consequence, and thereby not be
leadership in creativity. Ethical leadership is a kind of moral influenced by individualism.
leadership. Why a moral leadership would contribute to
more variance in intrinsic motivation? SDT may provide
an explanation. SDT argues that three psychological needs Source
independently influence intrinsic motivation (Deci et al., Results did not support that source has a moderating effect.
2017). This argument has been confirmed by meta-analytic Although studies using common source data would suffer from
evidence (Slemp et al., 2018). Transformational leaders may common method bias (Podsakoff et al., 2003), these effects in the
not be ethical and abusive to their followers in some current study are not series. Nonetheless, we still recommend
situations (Hoch et al., 2018), which may harm the need for using time-lagged research designs to reduce the effect of
relatedness and thereby decrease intrinsic motivation. As such, common method bias.
ethical leadership may influence a larger need for relatedness
than transformational leadership. Together, more theoretical
explanations and evidence are called to explain the links between Publication year
ethical (transformational) leadership and intrinsic motivation. We noticed that publication year had a moderating effect on
some leadership. However, these findings should be explained
carefully. Publication year may be associated with a lot of
Moderators factors. For example, publication year may be linked to economy
and management level that may influence leadership and
Power distance motivation. Besides, publication year may be related to research
In line with early studies (Lee et al., 2020a,b; Lyubykh et al., quality as research quality may increase as time goes by.
2022), power distance has been found to moderate leadership Together, the moderating effect of the publication year should
effectiveness. As such, leadership should be contingent be understood cautiously.
according to culture. That is, there is no single type of leadership
that works in all cultural situations. This point is especially
important in multinational companies as the same leadership Journal quality
may have different effects in different cultures. We noticed that the correlation became larger as the journal
quality became lower. This finding is in line with our research
experience. That is, the data quality would be higher in a
Individualism journal with higher quality. When data quality is low, they
We did not find evidence that individualism has a tended to exhibit higher correlations due to an unrigorous
moderating effect. This finding may suggest intrinsic motivation research design. Unfortunately, few meta-analyses researched
is a more universal concept. Intrinsic motivation is based on the modering effect of journal quality. We look forward to more
the enjoyment of the process rather than the consequence (Deci meta-analyses focusing on this moderator variable

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Xue et al. 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.941161

Practice implications motivation could be biased. Future studies should use more
effective measures to decrease multicollinearity and make a
The current study also contributes to practice. Drawing clearer distinction between leadership and its influence on
on our findings, some management suggestions should intrinsic motivation.
be mentioned. First, managers should avoid using abusive
supervision in the workplace. In the era of the knowledge
economy, intrinsic motivation is very important to
Conclusion
the employees’ performance quality. However, abusive
Leadership is important for the followers’ intrinsic
supervision would undermine intrinsic motivation deeply
motivation. Although fruitful evidence has been accumulated,
as the current study finds a strong and negative association
some unsolved issues still exist. To address these, the current
between abusive supervision. Second, the organization
study provides the first analysis between leadership and
should provide leadership training programs to managers.
intrinsic motivation. Overall, positive leadership (e.g.,
In particular, drawing on our findings, ethical, servant,
transformational leadership and servant leadership) positively
and empowering leadership positively relate to intrinsic
relate to intrinsic motivation, while abusive supervision
motivation. However, many managers are still lacking
negatively relates to intrinsic motivation. Empowering,
systematic leadership training. They just manage their
ethical, and servant leadership explain a larger variance in
followers according to their experience. The human resource
intrinsic motivation than transformational leadership. Power
department should provide these leadership training programs
distance, publication year, and journal quality moderates the
to managers. Finally, leaders should provide an antonomy
association between leadership and intrinsic motivation. Our
support climate to their followers, increasing their followers’
research enriches our understanding of the relationship
intrinsic motivation.
between leadership and intrinsic motivation. We also
provide some practice suggestions for managers drawing
on our findings.
Limitations and future research directions

Two limitations should be mentioned. First, since the Data availability statement
effect sizes used in this study are correlation coefficients,
we could not make a valid causal inference. Although it is The original contributions presented in the study
unlikely that reverse causality exists, for example, employee are included in the article/Supplementary materials,
motivation influencing leadership, there may be a common further inquiries can be directed to the
factor that affects both leadership and employee motivation corresponding author/s.
at the same time. For instance, organizational culture may
influence both leadership and employee motivation at the same
time. Future studies should use more experiment research Author contributions
designs to make accurate causality between leadership and
intrinsic motivation. HX: idea. HX and YLuan: introduction.
Second, multicollinearity may harm the robustness of HX and YLuo: hypotheses. YLuo, YLuan,
the current study. One positive leadership is usually highly and NW: method. NW: result. All authors
correlated with other positive leadership, which in turn, contributed to the article and approved the
may cause multicollinearity. For example, Hoch et al. (2018) submitted version.
find ethical (ρ = 0.70) and servant (ρ = 0.52) leadership
are largely related to transformation leadership. Carlson
Conflict of interest
and Herdman (2010) suggested that convergent validity is
well when r is bigger than 0.7. In other words, measures
The authors declare that the research was conducted in
of multiple leadership styles have well-convergent validity
the absence of any commercial or financial relationships
and they may reflect the same construct to some extent.
that could be construed as a potential conflict
At the same time, with the influence of multicollinearity,
of interest.
the links between leadership and intrinsic motivation
might be biased. For instance, B leadership rather than A
leadership is related to intrinsic motivation theoretically. Publisher’s note
However, due to the high correlation between A and B
leadership, A leadership is found to be related to intrinsic All claims expressed in this article are solely those
motivation. As such, the link between A leadership and intrinsic of the authors and do not necessarily represent those

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Xue et al. 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.941161

of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, Supplementary material

the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be
evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made The Supplementary Material for this article can be
by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by found online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/
the publisher. fpsyg.2022.941161/full#supplementary-material

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