Participative leadership and unit performance: evidence for intermediate linkages

The Effect of Participative Leadership Style on Employees’ Performance: The Contingent Role of Institutional Theory

This study aimed to examine the moderating role of institutional theory in the association between participative leadership style and various outcomes, such as employee loyalty and job performance in organizations. A cross-sectional research design was employed, where data were gathered from 347 participants from all managerial levels in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The findings demonstrated how the level of complexity of the institutional theory reduces the positive relationship between participative leadership style and employee loyalty, negatively affecting job performance. The current study contributes to the existing leadership literature by showing that participatory leaders do not behave similarly across various degrees of institutional theory complexity. The findings suggest that the higher the complexity of institutionalism, the wider the gap between leaders and subordinates, so implementing the participative style may become problematic in some circumstances.

How potential and realized absorptive capacity increased ability to innovate: the moderating role of structural ambidexterity

Purpose

Digital start-ups have limited resources. With the demands of rapid growth, digital start-ups need to rely on their ability to explore external knowledge and exploit it into swift innovation. Developing absorptive capacity is an alternative to overcome this difficulty. This study aims to demonstrate how the potential and realized an increase in absorptive capacity enables organizations to innovate moderated by structural ambidexterity. Empirical evidence places more emphasis on the impact of absorptive capacity on innovation but still leaves the “black-box” question of innovation and how potential absorptive capacity (PACAP) can achieve realized absorptive capacity (RACAP).

Design/methodology/approach

This study tests, with a structural equation model, samples collected from 143 digital start-ups in Indonesia.

Findings

The finding of this study suggests that PACAP influences the ability to innovate only if RACAP mediates it and structural ambidexterity positively moderates the relationship between these two variables.

Research limitations/implications

First, this study uses digital start-up organizations as respondents. Second, this study explores the role of the structural ambidexterity that moderates the relationship between PACAP and RACAP manifested in digital start-ups organizations that are identical to temporary companies with limited resources. Third, digital start-ups have a fast-growth life cycle, unlike regular companies. Finally, the validated scale is based on data collected entirely from digital start-ups located in Indonesia, which may limit the generalizability of the findings to other industry contexts.

Practical implications

Start-ups suffer from the ability to innovate that increases their propensity to fail. They overcome this failure by increasing the absorptive capacity of the founding team to improve their ability to innovate. Because of limited resources available at digital start-ups, the flexibility of their management style can overcome these barriers, allowing the pursuit of both knowledge exploration and exploitation in a balanced way.

Originality/value

Most of the studies explained that the ability to innovate comes from absorptive capacity. In fact, they do not explore PACAP and RACAP and their relationships. Moreover, the studies also indicated that the contextual ambidexterity moderated PACAP and RACAP. Meanwhile, digital start-ups in this study revealed that structural ambidexterity with two dimensions, i.e. shared value, and behavioral integration, enables and positively moderates the relationship between PACAP and RACAP.

Leadership Style and Employees' Commitment to Service Quality: An Analysis of the Mediation Pathway via Knowledge Sharing

Very little attention has been given to understanding the commitment to service quality and desirable outcomes in the hotel industry. This study investigates the impact of directive and participative leadership on the frontline commitment to service quality through the mediation of knowledge sharing. This will eventually help us to generate the employees' commitment to service quality (CSQ) desirable behavior. The survey was distributed to 37 hotels. A total of 235 frontline employees participated in the survey. The study findings show that directive leadership has a negative relationship with CSQ. On the other hand, participative leadership positively influences CSQ. Notably, knowledge sharing mediates between directive leadership, participative leadership, and commitment to service quality. There were positive linkages between commitment to service quality and desirable outcomes, job performance, and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and negative relation to turnover intention.

Participative Leadership: A Literature Review and Prospects for Future Research

Changes in the external market environment put forward objective requirements for the formulation of organizational strategic plans, making it difficult for the organization's leaders to make the right and effective decisions quickly on their own. As a result, participative leadership, which encourages and supports employees to participate in the decision-making process of organizations, has received increasing attention in both theory and practice. We searched the literature related to participative leadership in databases such as Web of Science, EBSCO, ProQuest, and China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI). Based on this, we clarify the concept of participative leadership, propose a definition of participative leadership, summarize measurement scales for this type of leadership, and compare participative leadership with other leadership styles (empowering leadership and directive leadership). We also present a research framework for participative leadership that demonstrates its antecedents; the mechanisms for its development based on social exchange theory, conservation of resources theory, social cognitive theory; social information processing theory, and implicit leadership theory; and outcomes. Finally, we identify five potential research areas: Connotation, antecedents, outcomes, mediators and moderators, and study of participative leadership in China.