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This paper aims to examine how ethical leadership alleviates knowledge contribution loafing among engineering designers through the mediating effect of knowledge-based psychological ownership and the moderating effect of emotion regulation strategies.

This study adopts a questionnaire survey to obtain 344 valid sample from engineering designers and uses partial least squares-structural equation modeling to analyze data.

The results demonstrate that ethical leadership is a key factor to alleviate knowledge contribution loafing. Knowledge-based psychological ownership is a main factor causing knowledge contribution loafing and mediates the influence of ethical leadership on knowledge contribution loafing. Furthermore, cognitive reappraisal (a response-focused emotion regulation strategy) moderates the relationship between ethical leadership and knowledge contribution loafing, and the effect of ethical leadership on knowledge contribution loafing is stronger when cognitive reappraisal is high.

Engineering design organizations may inspire ethical leadership and pay attention to psychological state of designers. Leaders may help designers overcome knowledge-based psychological ownership by the influence of ethical leadership. During the process of knowledge interaction, designers may adopt cognitive reappraisal strategy consciously.

This study addresses the knowledge gap that ethical leadership affects knowledge contribution loafing with knowledge-based psychological ownership as the intermediary. This study also advances the literature on leadership and emotion regulation and extends the scope of social learning theory in knowledge management domain through examining the moderate role of emotion regulation strategies.

Knowledge contribution loafing as one of the major obstacles to knowledge sharing among designers in engineering design firms impedes better achievement of engineering design. The purpose of this paper is to examine different types of ethical climate impacts on knowledge contribution loafing among designers through the mediating effect of knowledge leadership.

By adopting a quantitative research design, data were collected using a survey questionnaire from 352 designers in engineering design firms. The data were analyzed using the partial-least squares structural equation modeling approach to test hypotheses.

Ethical climate is an important factor to affect knowledge contribution loafing among designers, and three types of ethical climate (self-interest, social responsibility and law/professional codes) have different degrees of influence on knowledge contribution loafing. In addition, knowledge leadership can alleviate knowledge contribution loafing, and it is a mediator between ethical climate and knowledge contribution loafing.

Engineering design firms should cultivate and strengthen the role of social responsibility, law/professional codes and knowledge leadership and reduce the influence of self-interest to mitigate the negative of knowledge contribution loafing among designers.

By identifying ethical climate as a novel influence factor for knowledge contribution loafing, this research further highlights the role of different types of ethical climate in an engineering design context. Moreover, it delves deeply into the issue around different types of ethical climate affect knowledge contribution loafing among designers through the role of knowledge leadership. This broadens the understanding of how ethical climate affects knowledge contribution loafing among designers in the engineering design organizations and enriches knowledge management literatures in engineering design industry.

This research focuses on exploring a psychological mechanism between abusive supervision and job engagement via job insecurity and job alternative to understand how frontline construction workers' perceived abusive supervision impacts on their work engagement.

This study draws on the conservation of resources theory (COR) to postulate that workers' job insecurity acts as a mediation between abusive supervision and work engagement, and the perception of job alternative moderates the impact of abusive supervision on job insecurity. This study empirically tests survey data from 357 frontline construction workers and adopts partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) to test the proposed model.

This paper proved the dark-side of abusive supervision, dual character of job insecurity and moderating role of job alternative. The game-changing mediation effects of job insecurity were examined, which suggested that work engagement would be higher when abusive supervision stimulates stronger job insecurity. Furthermore, the result indicated that the relationship between abusive supervision and job insecurity should be weaker when job alternative is high.

This research suggests construction project managers (CPMs) must take steps such as enhancing supervisors' emotional management skills to control frequency of abuse and thus lessen compromising engagement. Moreover, overall understanding frontline workers' job insecurity is meaningful for better construction performance management.

This research contributes to the disputed leadership style (abusive supervision) and positive psychology knowledge (work engagement) in construction projects by unveiling the psychosocial mechanism (game-changing effects of job insecurity) of construction frontline workers positive engaged feeling. This study highlights the function of personal and job resources in process of resource conservation.

Project-based organizations (PBOs) face challenges to enhance employee work engagement because of dynamic and constant role configuration. Accordingly, this study aims to explore how ethical leadership enhances employee work engagement from a sensemaking perspective.

This study used a questionnaire-based quantitative research design to collect data from 194 full-time employees in PBOs. The data were analyzed via partial least squares-structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) technique to test hypotheses.

The findings show a positive relationship between ethical leadership and work engagement. Additionally, the relationship between ethical leadership and work engagement is mediated by two sensemaking mechanisms, i.e. goal commitment and prosocial.

This study deepens the understanding of how ethical leadership enhances work engagement in PBOs by providing two sensemaking mechanisms. By exploring the sensemaking process through which ethical leaders help employees construct identity, the findings contribute to the current literature on how ethical leadership enhances work engagement in PBOs.

This research aims to comprehensively investigate when and how cognitive conflict benefits team innovation in cross-functional project teams (CFPTs), by exploring the moderating role of knowledge leadership and dual mediation mechanisms of elaboration of task-related information/knowledge and affective conflict.

All hypotheses have been empirically tested by using structural equation model to analyze the quantitative data from a questionnaire survey covering 73 CFPTs in China.

Results indicate that knowledge leadership positively moderates the relationship between cognitive conflict and CFPT innovation. This moderating effect is directly or indirectly revealed by the dual mediating roles of task-related information/knowledge elaboration and affective conflict, which are two processes manifesting whether cognitive conflict can or cannot be incorporated into team innovation.

Despite the external validity of results limited by convenient sampling method, the findings offer implications for promoting CFPT innovation. This can be achieved by developing competent knowledge leadership into team sensegiver, dissent reconciler and facilitator to accentuate benefits of cognitive conflict in information/knowledge elaboration and attenuate the likelihood of escalating to affective conflict.

This study advances the understanding of why cognitive conflict has an equivocal effect on team innovation in the context of CFPT by originally revealing how leaders’ role in information/knowledge management acts as a contingency and suggesting the dual mediating mechanisms that reflect the contingent impact. Project-based teams or organizations, characterized by cognitive clashes, can enhance innovation performance by shaping the meaningfulness of information/knowledge activities triggered by cognitive conflict.

This paper aims to explore how digital capability incompatibility affects knowledge cooperation performance through the mediating effect of digital resilient agility and the moderating effect of project complexity in project network organizations (PNOs).

A cross-sectional questionnaire survey was conducted with 207 middle and senior managers in PNOs. Based on validated questionnaire items and construct definitions, a dynamic panel regression was performed using 292 project-focused firms’ annual reports.

The results show that digital capability incompatibility facilitates knowledge cooperation performance by enhancing digital resilient agility in PNOs. Increased project complexity strengthens this relationship, promoting better knowledge cooperation performance.

Managers can use partner firms’ diverse digital knowledge to quickly develop technologies and tackle digital transformation challenges, thereby improving knowledge cooperation. They can also evaluate the project environment to manage digitally-supported cooperation effectively.

This research reveals how firms in PNOs transform digital capability incompatibility into knowledge cooperation performance through digital transformation efforts. This research extends the boundary of this relationship to project-level factors and proposes digital resilient agility as a digital transformation effort for knowledge cooperation in PNOs than previous research.

Megaprojects present an intricated pattern of leadership activities, which evolve over their planning and delivery and comprises several stakeholders. A framework is useful to navigate this complexity; it allows to identify and cluster the key elements. This paper aims to introduce a novel framework based on boundary spanners to describe the structural pattern of shared leadership in megaprojects.

A systematic literature review about boundary spanning and shared leadership is used to identify and cluster the key elements of shared leadership in megaprojects. The systematic literature review provides a rich theoretical background to develop the novel shared leadership framework based on boundary spanners.

There are three key dimensions characterizing shared leadership topology in megaprojects: stakeholders, boundary spanning leadership roles and project phases. The novel framework shows how project leadership dynamically transfers among different stakeholders, showing the importance of shared leadership as a leadership paradigm in megaprojects.

The novel framework epitomizes shared leadership in megaprojects by exploring its antecedents with social network metrics. This paper stresses that shared leadership is the envisaged form of leadership in megaprojects. By modeling complex project leadership in a simple, yet effective way, the framework fosters critical thinking for future research. The modeling introduced by this framework would also benefit practitioners in charge of megaprojects.

The paper moves the project leadership research to the network-level by taking boundary spanners as shared leadership roles in megaprojects. It shows how shared leadership is a valuable management tool for planning and delivery megaprojects.

As a crucial soft skill, emotional intelligence (EI) is reported to have many benefits, yet it remains largely unexplored in construction project management. The purpose of this paper is to explore further application of project manager's EI to improve project performance.

A questionnaire‐based survey covering 112 project managers in construction is used to determine project managers’ EI, and relate that to the performance of their most recent projects, as well as examine the moderating effects of international involvement and contract type.

Results indicate high expressions of six EI factors in project performance of large and complex scale; whereas the effects of self‐confidence and teamwork have not been confirmed. Additionally, international involvement and contract type are found to moderate the relationships between certain EI factors and project performance.

The paper makes recommendations on selection and appointment of project managers to construction organizations; meanwhile it assists project managers in recognizing the significant competencies that cater for large and complex construction projects.

In this paper, the EI model is modified especially for project managers, to make up for the deficiency of project managers’ EI framework, as well as the project performance criteria for construction projects. Then an analysis takes place of the key EI dimensions or competencies on project performance, which contributes to the body of project managers’ EI.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between interpersonal conflict and construction project performance. The authors test the proposition that this relationship is mediated by negative emotions and moderated by political skill.

This study used a structured questionnaire survey and gathered 266 completed data from 45 construction project teams in mainland China. To test the hypotheses, bootstrapping procedures were used.

The results show that interpersonal conflict and negative emotions all have inverse relationships with project performance. Additionally, negative emotions mediated the relationship between interpersonal conflict and project performance, and this indirect relationship will be mitigated when team members have a high level of political skill.

These findings indicate that interpersonal conflict has a detrimental influence on project performance and should attract broad attention for future empirical literature. Furthermore, political skill is an effective contingent factor to suppress the detrimental influence of interpersonal conflict.

The findings imply that managers should highlight the importance of interpersonal conflict in construction projects.

This paper addresses a moderated mediation model to examine the relationship among interpersonal conflict, negative emotions and construction project performance, and it takes into account the moderating role of political skill. The paper also offers practical assistance to construction project managers in managing interpersonal conflict.