Abstract

Drawing on the conservation of resources theory and contingency theories of leadership, this study aims to investigate how sustainable leadership influences employees' wellbeing through employee resilience and to examine the moderating effect of environmental turbulence on the “sustainable leadership-employees' wellbeing” relationship. Data were collected from 593 employees and 373 supervisors adopting two-wave design among small and medium-sized enterprises in China. The authors used structural equation modeling to empirically test the hypothesized model in this study. The research shows that SL is significantly related to the employees' WB in SMEs. Regarding mediating effect, SL also indirectly influences employees' WB through ER. Moreover, the impact of SL on employees' WB becomes more prominent in the presence of lower ET. To the best of the authors' knowledge, no prior study is available about the integrated relationship of SL, ER, ET, and employee WB.