Focusing on followers: The role of regulatory focus and possible selves in visionary leadership

Harnessing Workplace Ostracism: Unleashing Proactive Behavior through Work Focus and Visionary Leadership

Differing from prior studies which explored workplace ostracism's negative impacts, in this study, we try to explore ways to mitigate and harness workplace ostracism to encourage proactive behavior. By drawing on regulatory focus theory, we propose that workplace ostracism can increase proactive behavior via enhanced promotion focus and prevention focus. We collected questionnaire data at multiple time points from employees in private enterprises in China, and a structural equation model was primarily used to test the proposed model. The results of the study indicate that workplace ostracism positively relates to work focus, which, in turn, improves employees' proactive behavior. Visionary leadership only moderates the relationship between workplace ostracism and promotion focus. Employees who perceive high levels of visionary leadership exhibit an increase in promotion focus after experiencing workplace ostracism. This increase in promotion focus further enhances their proactive behavior. These research findings clarify the pathway and boundary conditions through which workplace ostracism positively influences proactive behavior. They also provide valuable insights for enterprises seeking to promote proactive behavior among employees.

Overcome social anxiety disorder and develop visionary leadership in uncertain environments: The important role of psychological resilience

Uncertainty is the main feature of the business environment in the post-coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) era. People taking leadership positions in an uncertain environment constantly encounter unprecedented risks and challenges. Many of them have difficulties adapting to such an environment and thus experience severe anxiety, showing the symptoms of social anxiety disorder (SAD), failing to exert effective leadership in social interaction contexts. How can leaders overcome SAD and effectively motivate their subordinates in an uncertain environment? This study explores the important role of psychological resilience. Using sample data collected from 82 leaders and 363 subordinates of eight enterprises in China from May to June 2020, the current study reveals that a high degree of psychological resilience enables leaders to maintain intrinsic motivated at work in an uncertain environment. Leaders with a high degree of psychological resilience perform better in identifying the organizations' vision and displaying visionary leadership than those with a low degree. The current study enriches the knowledge of leaders' psychological well-being and effective leadership in the post-COVID-19 era.

Seeing the big picture during the COVID-19 pandemic: the spillover effects of visionary leadership on employees' work-to-family conflict

While an expanding body of research has revealed the beneficial impacts of visionary leadership on employees' work-related outcomes, little is known about its spillover effects on nonwork domains. Drawing upon work-home resources theory, we investigated the impacts of visionary leadership on employees' work-to-family conflict (WFC). Utilizing three-wave data from 268 employees, the results indicate that visionary leadership promotes follower relational energy, which in turn reduces WFC. Furthermore, perceived COVID-19 crisis disruption was found to strengthen the negative indirect link between visionary leadership and employees' WFC. Our research broadens our understanding of the potential positive spillover effects of visionary leadership in the nonwork domain through relational energy, and the accentuating effect of perceived crisis disruption on the work-family interface. The theoretical and managerial implications of these findings are discussed.

How did a local guerrilla turn into a global gorilla? Learning how transformational change happened under dynamic capabilities from the rise of Huawei

Purpose

In this paper, the authors tentatively develop a theoretical model that depicts how the dynamic capabilities of a firm may be driven by three macro-organizational foundations: visionary leadership, organizational culture, and empowered human resources. The authors propose that visionary leaders are the original driver of dynamic capabilities and that visionary leaders create a unique organizational culture and empowered human resources so that their organizations embrace the spirit of entrepreneurship, an orientation toward learning, and a commitment to mission-driven improvement.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors use a case of the early success of a highly performing Chinese telecommunication equipment producer, Huawei Technology, to explain the theoretical model that shows how dynamic capabilities are developed as visionary leaders influence firm routines for learning, innovation, and strategic human resource policies, which in turn collectively create and update operational capabilities to deliver directly manipulatable competitive advantages.

Findings

The paper concludes by arguing that the sources of dynamic capabilities need not be dynamic. Instead, visionary leadership, organizational culture, and human resource policies are relatively stable factors in comparison with other possible competence-building mechanisms such as innovation or ambidexterity.

Practical implications

The authors’ model provides a direction for firms in high-tech industries to develop dynamic capabilities in order to maintain competitiveness and sustain high performance.

Originality/value

This paper is the first to present three macro-level drivers of dynamic capabilities, and it is also the first to understand the success of Huawei from a dynamic capabilities perspective.

A deontic perspective on the collaborative, multimodal accomplishment of leadership

This article makes a case for investigating leadership from a micro-interactional perspective which integrates discursive, sequential and multimodal analytical layers. It thus builds on existing discursive leadership research by demonstrating that leadership is not achieved only through talk, but by means of a complex interplay between verbal and non-verbal resources. Focusing on video-recordings of authentic meetings, I investigate the interactional interplay between the superior, the meeting chair and the other participants by means of a deontic perspective. Drawing on the status–stance distinction and teasing out how proximal and distal deontic rights are enacted and how these relate to leader and follower identities when conceptualized from a social constructionist perspective, I demonstrate that leadership is an essentially collaborative accomplishment in which all participants play a crucial role. Finally, I argue that this can only be uncovered fully when attention is paid to the variety of means – verbal as well as non-verbal – that interlocutors have at their disposal when attempting to influence each other towards achieving organizationally relevant goals.

Leadership and work engagement: Exploring explanatory mechanisms

Construct proliferation in the leadership field raises questions concerning parsimony and whether we should focus on joint mechanisms of leadership styles, rather than the differences between them. In this theoretical research article, we propose that positive leadership styles translate into similar leader behaviors on the work floor that influence employee work engagement through a number of shared pathways. We take a deductive approach and review several established theories as well as relevant up-to-date empirical work from a bird’s-eye view to generate a general framework. We introduce a model with three processes (one direct process and two indirect processes) and five pathways (practical, motivational, affective, cognitive, and behavioral). With regard to the indirect processes, we propose that work characteristics (material pathway) and psychological need satisfaction (intrapersonal motivational pathway) mediate the relationship between positive leadership styles and engagement. Regarding the direct interpersonal process, we propose that leaders directly influence employee engagement through three pathways: emotional contagion (affective interpersonal pathway), social exchange (cognitive interpersonal pathway), and role modeling (behavioral interpersonal pathway). Our parsimonious research model furthers the integration of different theoretical viewpoints as well as underscores joint mechanisms with regard to the effect of positive leadership styles. Practically speaking, this article also provides insight into which processes leaders can work on to stimulate employee work engagement through progressive policies and work practices.

When inspiration does not fit the bill: Charismatic leadership reduces performance in a team crisis for followers high in self-direction

We extend charismatic leadership research by identifying conditions under which charismatic leadership reduces individual performance. Previous research found a positive impact of charismatic leadership, especially in crisis situations. However, we expect that followers with high self-determination reject charismatic leadership so that performance is reduced. In a laboratory experiment built as a brainstorming competition, 88 participants were randomly assigned to a condition with a team crisis or a control condition. Half of the participants received a charismatic leadership intervention after the crisis, which led to the ostentatious departure of a group member, while the other half was led laissez-faire. The results support our hypotheses. Although charismatic leadership was overall beneficial in a team crisis, our study provides experimental evidence of how charismatic leadership reduces the performance of certain team members in crises. Future research should investigate how leadership can best meet the specific needs of followers in different types of critical team situations.

How Person-Organization Fit Impacts Employees' Perceptions of Justice and Well-Being

Regulatory fit theory predicts that when individuals adopt strategies that sustain their motivational orientations, they feel right about what is happening. Our aim was to test these predictions at the person-organization level. Across three studies, we expected and found that a feeling right experience that results from a match between an employee and an organizational climate produces perceptions that the company's prevailing procedures are fair. In Study 1 (N = 300), a survey among employees of distinct companies, we observed that the more organizational characteristics matched individual promotion and prevention focus of the employees, the more the employees perceived their workplace as just. Study 2 (N = 139), a randomized-control experiment, replicated this pattern by demonstrating that individuals with a predominant promotion focus assigned fairness to the organizational conduct most strongly when they recalled events characterizing a promotion-oriented environment; on the contrary, individuals with a predominant prevention focus deemed their workplace most fair when they were asked to recall prevention-related conduct of their company. In Study 3 (N = 376), a cross-sectional field study, we found that regulatory non-fit was associated with lower procedural justice perceptions and this, in turn, related to higher burnout. Theoretical and practical implications of applying regulatory fit theory to person-organization relationships are discussed.

Can Misfit Be a Motivator of Helping and Voice Behaviors? Role of Leader–Follower Complementary Fit in Helping and Voice Behaviors

This study explores the role of leader–follower complementary fit in predicting followers’ helping and voice behaviors. We collected survey-based data from 645 employees in 119 South Korean teams and performed cross-level polynomial regression analyses and response surface tests. The cross-level polynomial regression analyses and post hoc analyses generally endorsed complementary fit effects, such that the levels of helping and voice behaviors were higher when promotion-focused followers interacted with less transformational leaders and when less promotion-focused followers interacted with transformational leaders. On the contrary, we detected a supplementary fit effect for prevention focus. More precisely, followers’ helping behavior was more pronounced when their prevention focus was similar to the level of transactional leadership than where there was a mismatch between the two. These findings provide a nuanced perspective for understanding the differential roles of complementary and supplementary fit between transformational and transactional leadership and follower regulatory focus in predicting helping and voice behaviors.

Promoting good decisions: How regulatory focus affects group information processing and decision-making

Decision-making groups often fail to exploit their full potential because they do not integrate all relevant information. We propose to address this issue by interpreting group information processing as a motivational process that is influenced by group goal structure. In line with this approach, we apply regulatory focus theory to decision-making groups. Specifically, we investigate the effects of a promotion versus a prevention focus framing on group decision quality and information processing. Sixty-three-person groups solved five decision-making tasks based on the “stranded in the desert” scenario. Regulatory focus was manipulated via pay-off schemes and group interactions were videotaped. We found that groups in a promotion focus solved more tasks correctly than groups in a prevention focus. This effect on decision quality was mediated by group information processing. Finally, we show that regulatory focus influences group interaction patterns, which represents an important extension of regulatory focus research in groups.

Leadership: A communicative perspective

This paper reviews the literature on communication in organizations most relevant to the study of leadership. Although leadership communication research has a history of significant overlap with leadership psychology, the value commitments of a communicative orientation now find expression in a large body of extant literature that this paper reviews. These value commitments, which cross several theoretical paradigms, serve as the organizing framework for this paper. The paper concludes with a research agenda for future leadership communication research.

The vision integration process: Applying Rogers’ diffusion of innovations theory to leader–follower communications

Involving followers in the communication of a new vision can be critical to its ultimate adoption. Viewing vision as a relatively novel guiding framework that may or may not “diffuse” throughout an organization, we apply Roger’s (2003) Diffusion of Innovations model to the visioning process. Employees from a large supermarket chain (n = 1481) completed surveys concerning vision knowledge, perceptions of the vision’s innovation characteristics (i.e. relative advantage, compatibility, trialability, observability, and complexity), bidirectional leader–follower communication about the vision, perceived integration of the vision into work behaviors, and organizational commitment. Perceptions of the innovation characteristics of the vision were related to both vision integration and commitment. Based on our findings, we argue that a new vision can be conceptualized as an innovation, in which followers are actively involved in decisions of adoption or rejection. We advocate a more balanced approach to vision integration that highlights both leader and follower roles.