Search results

The present study aimed to test the hypothesis that ethical leadership positively contributes to exploitative learning and explorative learning simultaneously and then examine the moderating role of work centrality in the relationships of ethical leadership with exploitative learning and explorative learning.

Time-lagged survey data were collected from 257 middle managers and their 257 immediate supervisors in 76 firms in China. Data were analyzed using structural equation modeling and Hayes' PROCESS macro for SPSS.

The results revealed that ethical leadership positively contributed to exploitative learning and explorative learning simultaneously. Importantly, the authors found that work centrality strengthened the positive relationships of ethical leadership with both exploitative learning and explorative learning.

The findings can help organizations enhance exploitative learning and explorative learning simultaneously and enable them to gain a sustainable competitive advantage.

Although explorative learning and exploitative learning together constitute fundamental resources for organizations' long-term success, prior research has not looked into whether and when leader behaviors facilitate explorative learning and exploitative learning simultaneously. The study contributed to fill this gap by introducing ethical leadership, signifying its positive role in enhancing both explorative learning and exploitative learning, and establishing work centrality as a moderator to reinforce these two positive relationships.

This study investigates why and when leader favorable feedback inhibits employees’ withdrawal behaviors. The authors propose that leader favorable feedback reduces employees’ withdrawal behaviors via employees’ gratitude toward the leader. The authors further posit that this mediation is contingent on leader-member exchange, arguing that as the quality of leader-member exchange increases, employees are more likely to feel grateful and are less likely to withdraw from work.

Two-wave, multisource field data collected from 662 employees were used to test our hypotheses.

Employees’ feelings of gratitude mediated the negative relationship between leader favorable feedback and employees’ withdrawal behavior. The negative effect of gratitude on withdrawal behavior was stronger under higher levels of leader-member exchange, as was the indirect effect of leader favorable feedback on withdrawal behavior via employees’ gratitude.

These results contribute to a social exchange-based understanding of gratitude as an emotional mechanism underlying the feedback and withdrawal relationship and provide important practical implications for managers.

The purpose of this study is to examine whether and how abusive supervision climate impacts team conflict from a mindfulness perspective. Prior research has identified serious dysfunctional effects of abusive supervision climate in teams. Team conflict, which is often a signal for dysfunctional relationships in teams, has however received limited attention. To contribute to this line of research, this study develops and tests a theoretical model on the role of team mindfulness in understanding the link between abusive supervision climate and task, process, and relationship conflict.

To test the theoretical model, this study collected and analyzed two-wave time-lagged data from 499 employees in 92 teams.

The results showed that abusive supervision climate aggravated task conflict and process conflict via diminishing levels of team mindfulness. Abusive supervision climate also exacerbated relationship conflict, but the effects did not occur via a decrease in team mindfulness.

While it may not always be possible to prevent the development of an abusive supervision climate in workplaces, other interventions may prevent conflict in teams with abusive leaders. As indicated by the findings, task conflict and process conflict may be reduced if teams are high on mindfulness. Interventions that stimulate team mindfulness might thus improve collaboration in teams with abusive leaders.

This research offers novel insights regarding how abusive leaders might instigate conflict within teams. Specifically, through the unique perspective of mindfulness, the authors are able to offer new insights into how abusive supervision climate affects task, process and relationship conflict. This study offers a novel, yet important, lens to examine how conflict occurs in teams.

This study aims to focus on three types of team faultlines (separation-based faultlines, variety-based faultlines and disparity-based faultlines) and discuss the different ways through which their configurational properties (faultline strength and faultline distance) affect team performance.

The authors adopted panel data regression analysis to test the model. Panel data of Chinese provincial party-government top cadres teams that covers 30 provincial areas from 2007 to 2012 were collected for data analyses.

The results revealed that separation-based faultline strength was negatively related to team performance, variety-based faultline strength had a U-shape relationship with team performance and disparity-based faultline strength had an inversed U-shape relationship with team performance. In addition, separation-based and disparity-based faultline distances served as moderators enhancing the curvilinear relationship between faultline strength and team performance. Notably, variety-based faultline distance failed to exaggerate the U-shape relationship between variety-based faultline strength and team performance; however, the relationship changed based on different levels of variety-based faultline distance.

This study discussed team configurations based on three types of faultlines by comparing differences between team configurations reflected by diversity and faultline strength. Settled in Chinese political context, this study empirically tested the interaction effects between faultline strength and distance on team performance.