Name: Cooper Drose

School of Psychology – Ph.D. Dissertation Proposal Meeting

Date: Wednesday, November 19th, 2025

Time: 3:00pm

Zoom link:  Join the meeting now

Dissertation Chair/Advisor: 

Scott Moffat, Ph.D. (Georgia Institute of Technology)

Dissertation Committee Members: 

Keaton Fletcher, Ph.D. (Colorado State University)

Chris Wiese, Ph.D. (Georgia Institute of Technology)

Thackery Brown, Ph.D. (Georgia Institute of Technology)
Katie Badura, Ph.D. (Georgia Institute of Technology)

Title: Follower Perceptions of Leader Workaholism Predicting Emotional Exhaustion Through Job Demands and Resources: The Role of Leader-Member Exchange (LMX)

Abstract: Despite a wealth of research investigating the impacts of workaholism on the self, little has been done to explore its influence on others within the workplace. Specifically, within the leadership literature, despite the known negative behavioral tendencies and consequences of workaholism, those who score highly on workaholism tend to experience significantly greater career prospects and are more often in managerial positions (Clark et al., 2016). For this reason, this dissertation seeks to uncover the impacts of having a leader high in workaholism on the follower. Drawing upon Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) theory (Demerouti et al., 2001), I propose that followers will experience significantly greater demands and fewer resources, and subsequently greater emotional exhaustion, as a consequence of leaders’ workaholic tendencies. Additionally, I seek to extend this research by calling upon Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) theory (Dansereau, et al., 1975) and propose two models in which the quality of the leader-follower relationship acts first as a serial mediator and then as a moderator for the proposed relationships. Data will be collected using a 10-day experience sampling methodology (ESM) from 150 full-time employees in the United States. Multilevel structural equation modeling will be used to test the proposed relationships, deriving between-person latent factors from daily items (via multilevel CFA) and modeling baseline Workaholism and LMX as person-level latent variables. Results will offer insight into the interpersonal consequences of leader workaholism and clarify the conditions under which its negative effects on employees are exacerbated or mitigated. This study contributes to both the workaholism and leadership literatures by identifying key mechanisms and boundary conditions linking leader behavior to employee strain.