Search results

Based on social information processing (SIP) theory, this study explores the cross-level effect of high-involvement work practices (HIWPs) on employee innovative behavior by studying the mediating role of self-reflection/rumination and the moderating role of transactive memory system (TMS).

This study collects data from 452 employees and their direct supervisors in 94 work units, and tests a cross-level moderated mediation model using multilevel path analysis.

The results suggest that HIWPs significantly contribute to employee innovative behavior. Both self-reflection and self-rumination mediate the above relationship. TMS not only positively moderates the relationship between HIWPs and self-reflection, but also reinforces the linkage of HIWPs. →self-reflection→employee innovative behavior. Furthermore, TMS negatively moderates the relationship between HIWPs and self-rumination, and attenuates the mediating effect of self-rumination.

The study suggests that enterprises should invest more in promoting HIWPs and TMS in the workplace. Furthermore, managers should provide employees training programs to enhance their self-reflection, as well as lower self-rumination, in order to facilitate employee innovative behavior.

This research identifies self-reflection and self-rumination as key mediators that link HIWPs to employee innovative behavior and reveals the moderating role of TMS in the process.

Based on experiential learning theory (ELT), this study explores the cross-level effect of team reflexivity on employee innovative behavior. The authors especially focus on the mediating effect of individual intellectual capital (IIC) and the moderating effect of empowering leadership on the relationship between the two constructs.

This study collects data from 76 work units, which include 362 employees and their direct supervisors. A cross-level moderated mediation model was tested by using multilevel path analysis.

The results show that team reflexivity significantly contributes to employee innovative behavior. IIC mediates the above relationship. Empowering leadership not only positively moderates the relationship between team reflexivity and IIC but also reinforces the linkage of team reflexivity → IIC → employee innovative behavior.

The study suggests that organizations should invest more in promoting team reflexivity and empowering leadership in the workplace. Furthermore, managers should make members aware of the importance of IIC for employee innovative behavior. They need to make efforts to enhance IIC via internal communication channels or open discussions, which facilitate IIC and employee innovative behavior.

This research tests the relationship between team reflexivity and employee innovative behavior and identifies IIC as a key mediator that links team reflexivity to employee innovative behavior. It also highlights the moderating role of empowering leadership in the process.

Although team reflexivity has been identified as a potent tool for improving organizational performance, how and when it influences individual employee innovative behavior remains theoretically and conceptually underspecified. Taking a knowledge management perspective, this study aims to investigate the role of team-level knowledge sharing and leadership in transforming team reflexivity into innovative behavior at the individual level.

The paper follows a multilevel study design to collect data (n = 441) from 91 teams in 48 knowledge-based organizations. The paper tests our multilevel model using multinomial logistic techniques.

The overall results confirm that knowledge sharing in teams mediates the influence of team reflexivity on individual employee innovative behavior, and that leadership plays an important role in moderating these influences. Specifically, authoritarian leadership is found to attenuate the team reflexivity and knowledge sharing effect, whereas benevolent leadership is found to amplify this indirect effect.

The multilevel study design that explains how team-level processes translate into innovative behavior at the individual employee level is novel. Relatedly, our use of a multilevel analytical framework is also original.

This study proposes and tests a model grounded in resource-based theory to describe how the formal rules embedded in an organization's green human resource management (GHRM) combine with informal cues communicated by members of the firm's upper echelon, including the CEO and members of the top management team (TMT), to affect a firm's environmental performance.

Multi-source data were collected from 240 human resource managers, chief financial officers and CEOs in 80 firms.

The results show that CEO ethical leadership moderates the positive relationship between GHRM and TMT green commitment, which in turn mediates the relationship between GHRM and firms' environmental performance.

The tested importance of CEO ethical leadership as an organizational condition that amplifies the effectiveness of strategically aligned HRM systems offers new theoretical insights to advance HRM scholarship.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how employee perceptions of the ethical conduct of their leaders affect their job satisfaction in the context of the workplace in China. The authors posit that guanxi, which is a complex relational phenomenon deeply rooted in Chinese tradition, may act as a substitute for ethical leadership in the Chinese workplace.

A conceptual model which explicitly incorporates guanxi as a moderator in explaining the relationship between ethical leadership and job satisfaction is developed. This model is then tested using data from a sample (n=388) of professional employees in nine organisations in Beijing, China.

The results show that, as expected, self-efficacy positively and strongly mediates the ethical leadership-job satisfaction relationship. However, guanxi negatively moderates the overall effect of ethical leadership on job satisfaction with the effect being larger in Chinese-owned enterprises compared to foreign-owned enterprises. The findings suggest that employee relationship with their leaders may act as a substitute for ethical leadership in the Chinese workplace.

The main question which this research uncovers is whether the Western-based conceptualisation of ethical leadership is applicable in different cultural contexts. The authors’ research shows clearly that in the case of China, guanxi plays a substituting role and reduces the effects of ethical leadership on job satisfaction. Future research could investigate the effects of ethical leadership in different cultural contexts.

The substituting effect of guanxi on the ethical leadership-job satisfaction relationship suggests that Western firms need to consider culture as an integral contextual factor in explaining employee job satisfaction when they operate in a different cultural context.

The explicit consideration of guanxi as an influencing factor of the effects of ethical leadership on job satisfaction in the context of the workplace in China and the testing of this relationship via a moderated-mediation approach is novel.

The widespread use of communication technologies and social media platforms such as the #ME TOO movement has amplified the importance for business leaders to demonstrate high standards of ethical behavior for career success. Although the concept of ethical leadership has been widely investigated, a theoretical framework from a career perspective does not yet exist.

This study draws from sensemaking theory to argue that career identity salience shapes leaders' communication behavior to influence the extent to which they are perceived to be ethical by subordinates. We test our hypotheses using multisource data with a sample (n = 337) of business managers.

The results show that career identity salience has positive influence on communication competence, which positively influences ethical leadership. We further find that communication frequency positively moderates the relationship between communication competence and ethical leadership.

The theoretical and practical implications that, motivated by their career identity, career-ambitious leaders can manipulate subordinates' perceptions of their ethical behavior are discussed along with suggestions for future research.

To our knowledge, this is the first research to provide a career perspective on ethical leadership.

This study focuses on an emerging deviant behavior at the team level and investigates when and why the team level processes reduce team expedient behavior. Anchored on the input–process–outcome (I–P–O) theoretical framework for studying team effectiveness, it conceptualizes and tests a research model where servant leadership and team-based human resource management (HRM practices) serve as a team-level input that interacts to influence the process of team reflexivity and ultimately reduces team expedient behavior as the outcome.

Data are from 109 teams involving a total of 584 employees and analyzed at the team level.

The findings provide empirical support that team-based HRM practices positively moderate the relationship between servant leadership and team reflexivity and that team reflexivity transforms the influence of servant leadership into reduced team expedient behavior. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

The participants in this study were drawn from diverse backgrounds (n = 584), and they were nested within 109 teams. Therefore, the authors were cautious of making claims that the findings would apply to every team in the context of China. The authors acknowledge that the research design of this study is not the strongest to test for causal relationship.

The findings show the synergistic role of servant leadership and team-based HRM practices and suggest organizations have both in place to mitigate deviant behaviors by teams. The study also suggests organizations develop and promote an environment where team members are motivated and encouraged to share their ideas, openly discuss experiences and set up forward plans.

Organizations should focus on training their leaders of the behaviors such as supporting followers, enhancing subordinates' commitment to the collective goal and emphasizing the equality between themselves and subordinates. Organizations need to increase their awareness that the teams are more likely to perform their tasks by the means prescribed by the organizational rules if they communicate, discuss and get modeling or feedback from other teams.

This study enriches research on team-based HRM practices, which so far have received limited attention, and deserves further investigation. It sharpens the underlying mechanism that translates team-level input of leadership and HRM to the desired outcomes of reduced expedient behavior by introducing the role of team reflexivity. The study adds to the growing research on workplace deviance by addressing team-level expedient behavior.

This paper develops and tests a theoretical framework to explain the effect of guanxi human resource management (HRM), a unique Chinese cultural phenomenon, on employee innovative behavior.

We draw from a sample of 398 employees in 81 teams and test the moderated mediation model using multi-level modeling.

The results show that guanxi HRM can be perceived by employees as being simultaneously an unethical hindrance that stifles innovative behavior and a strategic challenge that is beneficial for innovative behavior. In addition, the results show that these indirect effects are contingent upon the strength of guanxi HRM.

The study advances our understanding of the mechanism and boundary condition underlying the double-edged nature of guanxi HRM practices.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate why managerial leaders engage in leader self-development (SD) vis-à-vis China’s transition process and what domains of leadership competencies are enhanced. It aims to investigate leader SD as an interaction between self-regulation and the confluence of multiple contexts experienced simultaneously by these managerial leaders within China’s transition.

This paper adopts a two-phase exploratory sequential mixed-method design. The absence of empirical research on leader SD in China led to a qualitative approach in the initial stage. Focus groups were first conducted to establish the relevance of the focal construct in a holistic and elaborative way. In-depth interviews were then undertaken to capture the richness of the phenomenon through meaningful contextualization and to identify themes as representative of issues faced by participants. Seven themes emerged from this process, which, through consultation with the relevant literature, were operationalized in the second stage to generate a survey for hypothesis testing.

The combination of insights from qualitative and quantitative studies highlights the dynamic and interactive nature of leader SD as a product of contextual and personal influences in China. The influential mechanisms connecting personal and contextual enablers and SD are in the cognitive processing of developmental needs and personal responsibility. Chinese managerial leaders who take the initiative to assess their own developmental needs and assume responsibility for their development are more likely to undertake SD. The developmental activities focus primarily on technical leadership competencies.

A competency perspective to development may not address fully complexities involved in leader development. Also developing leadership competencies is an ongoing process. Due to limited time and fund, this paper did not take a time perspective to investigate both the immediate and long-term outcomes of leader SD.

SD is an emerging strategy that has the potential to address the shortage of managerial leadership competencies. The analysis of the self-regulatory process explains the mediating dynamism underlying different domains of leader SD. Recruitment focusing on people with a relatively higher degree of self-regulation thus increases the potential for organizations to staff themselves with employees aware of, and prepared for, SD organization would like to take place. It is also advisable that organizations make efforts to create a learning environment in general.

This mixed-method approach provides a multi-layered investigation that ultimately adds rigor and relevance to the research findings. It is this analysis of the complex web of economic, social and cultural contexts existing in China, and applying them to social cognitive theory as an explanatory platform, that underpins the originality of the study.

Drawing on a motivational model of proactive behavior, this study theorizes that employment status, reflective moral attentiveness (RMA), and organization-based self-esteem (OBSE) constitute the can-do, reason-to, and energized-to motivational states, which interact to induce organizational citizenship behavior toward the environment (OCB-E).

The authors conducted random coefficient modeling (RCM) analysis with a multisource, time-lagged data set collected from 235 employees in Chinese firms.

This RCM analysis found that more OCB-E resulted from standard employees with higher levels of RMA and OBSE.

The value of this research lies in understanding of the antecedents of green behavior at the individual level by identifying specific motivational states and highlighting the coexistence of motivational states in predicting OCB-E. These findings provide new insight into the theory of developing and managing green OCB performers in today's workplace characterized by workforce mixing.