Search results

Drawing on the dual process model of ideology and prejudice, the purpose of this paper is to examine whether, how and when a supervisor's Machiavellianism leads to subordinates' perceptions of abusive supervision. In doing so, the authors also explore the mediating role of the supervisor's competitive world views and the moderating role of subordinates' performance on this relationship.

The theoretical model was tested using three sources of data from supervisors, their subordinates and the organization. Hierarchical linear model analysis was run on supervisor and subordinate dyadic data for testing whether subordinates' performance moderated the mediated relationships or not.

The results suggest that the supervisors' competitive worldviews explain the positive link between their Machiavellianism and subordinates' perceptions of abusive supervision. The results highlight that the mediation effect of supervisors' competitive worldviews on the link between their Machiavellianism and their subordinates' perceptions of abusive supervision is more pronounced when subordinates' performance is low than when it is high.

This research contributes to the authors’ knowledge of the link between supervisors' Machiavellianism and abusive supervision, and how the toxic influence of their Machiavellianism is mediated by supervisors' competitive worldviews.

The study contributes to the literature on abusive supervision and personality by studying the role of personality as an antecedent of abusive supervision. Further, this study used subordinates' performance as a contextual variable for understanding abusive supervision.

Community citizenship behaviors (CCBs) of employees help organizations to promote a socially conscious image. However, there is still a significant gap in the knowledge as to how to foster CCBs amongst employees. The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether ethical leadership, as a prosocial leadership approach, fosters CCBs amongst employees, both at work and when they leave the office, through enhancing their prosocial motivation.

Data were collected from 160 employees across 48 small- and medium-sized enterprises in China. Multi-level modeling using maximum likelihood estimation in MPlus was utilized to analyze the two-level model simultaneously and the significance of the multi-level indirect effects was tested using the Monte Carlo method with 20,000 replications.

Counter to the expectations, the authors found that although ethical leadership increased employees’ prosocial motivation, this only translated to higher levels of employees’ CCBs at work, but not once they left the office.

The findings suggest that ethical leaders play a critical role in developing the prosocial motivation of employees and encouraging them to engage in CCBs that are supported by the organization. To that end, organizations should consider hiring leaders with high levels of ethical leadership and provide ethical leadership training to senior management.

The authors make a theoretical contribution by explaining the process by which ethical leaders influence employees to engage in CCBs, addressing calls to understand how social learning theory can be used to understand how people learn to become socially responsible.

The purpose of this study was to address calls for and test efficacy of an app based, short term resilience intervention for individual benefit.

Three independent samples of participants were assessed to determine the efficacy of an employee focused resilience intervention. Study 1 includes a cross sectional validation of the approach. Study 2 examines validity of the intervention using pre- and post-tests. Study 3 utilizes random assignment of groups (treatment and control) to determine invention results on resilience and individual psychological well-being.

Evidence suggests employees in the experimental group reported higher levels of resilience and psychological well-being as a result of the intervention. Further, the authors found no significant changes in resilience or psychological well-being amongst employees in the control group suggesting the intervention induced the effect.

Previous research attempting resilience interventions have been long, cumbersome and expensive for organizations. Basing the authors’ method on previous research regarded as micro interventions, this intervention is individualized, flexible and very cost effective for organizational application.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the factors which determine the adoption of best HR practices in Chinese small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

Regression analysis was utilized to analyse survey data obtained from 345 enterprises operating across China in a wide range of industrial sectors.

Enterprises with greater resources in terms of their size, their relationships with external organizations, their cooperation with foreign partners and the human capital of their CEO were found to be more likely to adopt best HR practices. Contrary to the findings of the existing literature no relationship was found of a relationship between family ownership and the use of best HR practices.

The cross-sectional design is an obvious limitation of the study. Other limitations relate to the generalizability of the study findings outside the context in which the research was undertaken, and the use of convenience sampling.

Enterprises should consider building strategic relationships with external organizations and developing cooperation with foreign partners as a way of leveraging human resource expertise at a limited cost.

This is the first study to examine how differences in the resource endowments of Chinese SMEs influence their adoption of best HR practices.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the importance of owner/manager characteristics in explaining the capital structure decisions of entrepreneurial enterprises in emerging economies using a sample of Chinese small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs). Although mainstream theories from the finance literature are useful in explaining capital structure decisions for large firms in developed economies, they do not adequately explain the financing behaviour of SMEs in developing economies.

The authors' mixed methods approach utilized both quantitative and qualitative methods to understand how managerial factors influence the capital structure of Chinese SMEs.

The findings suggest that the capital structure of SMEs in China is primarily influenced by aversion to external control and propensity to take risk. It was also found that owners with better networking ties generally require less debt financing because they can access adequate external resources through informal channels.

The main limitation concerns the extent to which the paper's findings can be generalised to outside of the specific location in which the research was undertaken. Future research might be extended to other emerging economies to determine whether the findings of this research are unique to China or robust across emerging economies, given different institutional contexts.

Given the critical importance of fostering growth of private enterprise in China, policy makers should be aware of how the attitudes of owner/managers impact on the development of SMEs when developing mechanisms to support them.

Citizens in economies which provide sufficient financing and support to entrepreneurial enterprises generally enjoy a higher standard of living than societies which do not.

This paper fulfils an identified need for studying how entrepreneurial firms in emerging economies make the financing decisions necessary to expand and grow.

Although there is growing research on the relationship between ethical leadership and subordinate work behaviors, limited research has examined the boundary conditions under which ethical leadership is more or less effective. The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether subordinate perceptions of role clarity in their job role influence the relationship between ethical leadership and subordinate work behaviors. Drawing on both social exchange and social learning theories, the authors predict that in contexts where subordinates perceive low levels of role clarity, the relationship between ethical leadership behavior and subordinate helping and deviant behaviors will be weaker.

In total, 239 employees in the Chinese public sector completed surveys across three separate time points. Confirmatory factor analysis and hierarchical regression analysis were used to analyze the data.

Analyses provided support for the hypothesized relationships. When subordinates perceived higher levels of role clarity the positive relationship between ethical leadership and helping behavior was stronger, and the negative relationship between ethical leadership and deviant behavior was stronger.

As with all research the findings of this study need to be viewed in light of its limitations. First, the use of data from a single set of respondents opens up the possibility of common method bias. Second, given the study used of a sample of public sector employees from one part of China, there would be value in future research examining whether the findings from the present study are generalizable to other industrial and cultural contexts.

This research has a number of practical implications. Given that the authors found a significant positive relationship between ethical leadership and helping behavior, and a significant negative relationship between ethical leadership and deviant behavior, it is crucial for organizations to include ethical training as an essential part of leadership development programs. However, the findings also suggest at the same time as facilitating the development of ethical leadership behaviors amongst supervisory employees, it is important for organizations to also provide employees with clarity over what is expected of them in their jobs, and the means they should employ to facilitate goal achievement.

This study responds to recent calls for more research to identify factors which may strengthen or mitigate the influence of ethical leadership in the workplace.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of perceived organizational support (POS), perceived supervisor support (PSS) and intra‐organizational network resources on the turnover intentions of the Chinese employees of multinational enterprises.

The study utilized structured equation modeling to analyze survey data from 437 Chinese employees of five multinational enterprises operating in the Chinese service sector.

The study found that POS was positively related to affective organizational commitment, which in turn was negatively related to turnover intentions. A direct relationship was revealed between PSS and turnover intentions, as well as a mediated relationship through POS. In contrast, the relationship between intra‐organizational network resources and turnover intentions was fully mediated through POS.

The cross sectional design is a limitation of the study. Another limitation regards the generalisability of the findings outside the specific research context. Future research should be extended to different geographical and organizational settings.

In order to promote employee retention, multinational enterprises operating in China could start by carefully targeting visible support on offer to their employees. Improving supervisor support is a relatively inexpensive and practical measure compared to the costly alternatives such as improving employee compensation, training and career development. Organizations should also consider improving co‐worker support schemes in the workplace which enable individuals to build up their network resources.

The study provided evidence for both a direct relationship between PSS and turnover intentions and a mediated one via POS, confirming the generalisability of previous findings to the Chinese context. In addition it made an original contribution by establishing that POS fully, rather than partially mediated the relationship between intra‐organizational network resources and turnover intentions. This suggests that Chinese employees attribute instrumental and expressive support from others in the organization as coming from the organization itself.

The purpose of this study is to assess how the cultural value orientations of individual employees moderate their attitudinal responses to different categories of organizational rewards. Specifically, it seeks to examine how one dimension of traditionality, respect for authority, moderates the relationship between affective organizational commitment and three variables: pay satisfaction, autonomy and satisfaction with supervision.

Hierarchical regression analysis was utilized to analyze survey data obtained from a sample of 290 employees of a major Chinese airline company.

Employees high in traditionality were found to exhibit higher levels of affective commitment when autonomy and satisfaction with supervision was low. When autonomy and satisfaction with supervision was high employees low in traditionality exhibited higher levels of emotional attachment to the organization.

The cross‐sectional design is an obvious limitation of the study. Another limitation relates to the generalizability of the study findings outside the context in which the research was undertaken.

Organizations should consider taking the cultural orientations of their workforce into account when developing appropriate human resource policies aimed at heightening employee commitment. This should enhance employee well‐being, which is especially important in a global economy characterized by uncertainty and rapid change.

This is the first study to examine how employees with different cultural value orientations respond to different categories of organizational rewards, in a predominantly traditional society.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of market orientation on exploratory and exploitative innovation, and the moderating effects of family ownership on these relationships.

This study utilizes multi-group path analysis and confirmatory factor analysis in LISREL on data from 228 firms in the Australian service sector.

This study establishes that both customer and competitor innovation are positively related to exploitative and exploratory innovation. However, customer orientation does not lead to significantly stronger effects on exploitative innovation than on exploratory innovation, and competitor orientation does not lead to significantly stronger effects on exploratory innovation than on exploitative innovation. In addition, the study found that the relationship between customer orientation and exploratory innovation was stronger for family firms, while the relationships between competitor orientation and both exploratory and exploitative innovation were stronger for non-family firms.

The cross-sectional design is one weakness of this study. In addition, as firms in the present study came from the service sector the generalizability of the findings to other sectors of the economy need to be determined.

These findings of this study highlight the need for managers to build a strong market orientation in order to promote innovation, and consider the effects of ownership structure on innovation strategies.

This study is the first to measure the relative influence of customer and competitor orientation on a firm’s use of exploitative and exploratory innovation strategies.