Power in Cooperative and Competitive Organizational Contexts

How does differential leadership affect team decision-making effectiveness? The role of thriving at work and cooperative goal perception

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to explore the mechanism and boundary conditions in the relationship between differential leadership and team decision-making effectiveness.

Design/methodology/approach

A total of 366 valid questionnaires were received from employees of high-tech enterprises in China, regression-based moderation and bootstrapping analyses were adapted to analyze data and test hypotheses by using the PROCESS syntax in SPSS software.

Findings

Differential leadership can positively contribute to team decision-making effectiveness, and thriving at work mediates the relationship between the two, and cooperative goal perception plays a moderating role in the relationship between thriving at work and team decision-making effectiveness and cooperative goal perception moderate the mediating effect of thriving at work between differential leadership and team decision-making effectiveness.

Practical implications

The findings suggest that managers need to focus on leadership style to promote improved team decision-making effectiveness by enhancing thriving at work and cooperative goal perception.

Originality/value

Overall, this study is based on the conservation of resources theory to uncover the “black box” between differential leadership and team decision-making effectiveness and to highlight the important role of thriving at work and cooperative goal perception.

I Am My (High-Power) Role

Research indicates that power liberates the self, but findings also show that the powerful are susceptible to situational influences. The present article examines whether enacting roles that afford power leads people to identify with the roles or, instead, liberates them from role expectations altogether. The results of three experiments support the hypothesis that power enhances role identification. Experiment 1 showed that enacting a particular role resulted in greater implicit and explicit role identification when the role contained power. In Experiment 2, infusing a role with power resulted in greater role identification and role-congruent behavior. Experiment 3 demonstrated that power resulted in greater role-congruent self-construal, such that having power in a close relationship caused participants to define themselves relationally, whereas having power in a group situation caused participants to embrace a collective self-construal. Implications for research on power, roles, and the self are discussed.