Poor leadership and employee sleep disturbances : A three-wave longitudinal study based on a Swedish cohort.

Abstract: Sleep disturbances are a worldwide phenomenon with detrimental health and financial effects on society and its sufferers. Poor leadership has previously been shown to be associated with sleep disturbances. However, the field lacks longitudinal research, and few conclusions can be drawn about the causality of the association. This study therefore sought out to gain a deeper understanding of poor leadership and sleep disturbances among different groups within the working population. And research if employees with poor leadership developed sleep disturbances to a greater extent than those unexposed to poor leadership, with a longitudinal approach. The study applied a three-wave design, sampling cross-sectional data from a Swedish cohort. By excluding exposed and sleep disturbed respondents in the first wave, the study population only included unexposed and non-sleep disturbed respondents. Exposure was measured in the second wave while outcome was measured in the third wave. The study also controlled for several confounders. The results showed that sleep disturbances and poor leadership relate differently to characteristics such as gender, age, and industry-belonging. Furthermore, sleep disturbances may be a long-lasting issue once developed. Lastly, results showed no statistically significant relationship between poor leadership and sleep disturbances. The lack of findings in this study could possibly be due to poor validity of the poor leadership measure, a too long follow-up period for the outcome of interest, and a lack of control of the respondents’ employment and manager changes.