Why and when do employees become more proactive under humble leaders? The roles of psychological need satisfaction and Chinese traditionality

Leader humility and employees' creative performance: the role of intrinsic motivation and work engagement

Drawing on the job demand-resource (JD-R) model and self-determination theory (SDT), this study examines the relationship between humble leadership and employees' creative performance, taking into account the sequential mediating role of intrinsic motivation and work engagement. The sequential mediation model was tested using two-wave questionnaire data collected from employees and their supervisors (n = 350) in the telecommunication sector of Pakistan. Data were processed and examined using SPSS and AMOS. The results revealed significant positive relationships among all variables. Further, it was found that intrinsic motivation and work engagement sequentially but partially mediated the positive relationship between humble leadership and creative performance. The theoretical and practical implications are discussed at the end.

More humility for leaders, less procrastination for employees: the roles of career calling and promotion focus

Purpose

Based on the conservation of resources theory, the authors explore the relationship between humble leadership and employee procrastination by introducing career calling and promotion focus, and constructing a moderated mediation model aiming to reveal the influence of humble leadership on employee procrastination.

Design/methodology/approach

A total of 217 valid samples were obtained using a two-time point paired questionnaire. The proposed hypotheses were tested using hierarchical regression.

Findings

Hierarchical regression results indicated that humble leadership had a significant negative effect on employee procrastination. Career calling played a fully mediating role in humble leadership and employee procrastination. Promotion focus not only plays a positive moderating role between humble leadership and career calling but also moderates the mediating role of career calling.

Practical implications

Managers should pay attention to the cultivation of their own character of humility in the process of communicating with their subordinates, increase employees' career calling from various aspects to improve employees’ sense of meaning and value for their work and understand employees' situation for personalized management.

Originality/value

This study reveals for the first time the inhibitory effect of humble leadership on employee procrastination through the conservation of resources theory. This helps in expanding research on the antecedents of procrastination behavior and enriching research on the effects of implementing humble leadership. For this reason, the study contributes to the literature on humble leadership, employee procrastination and the conservation of resources theory.

Promotion mechanism of high-involvement human resource management practices to employees' bootlegging: A moderated mediation model

Introduction

Bootlegging is a frontier topic in micro-innovation literature. Existing research on the external environment-antecedents of employees' bootlegging focuses mainly on organizational innovation management practices and leadership. The relationship between human resource management and employees' bootlegging is still unclear. Thus, we follow the stimuli-organism-response model and use psychological ownership theory to examine a moderated mediation model with psychological ownership as a mediator and Chinese traditionality as a moderator to interpret how and when high-involvement human resource management practices influence employees' bootlegging.

Methods

We administered three-wave time-lagged surveys to 251 employees and used SEM analysis to test the hypotheses.

Results

The results show that high-involvement human resource management practices is positively related to employees' psychological ownership. Whereas psychological ownership, in turn, positively related to bootlegging. Meanwhile, employees' psychological ownership plays a significant mediating role between high-involvement human resource management practices and employees' bootlegging. The results further showed that employees' Chinese traditionality weakens the influence of psychological ownership on bootlegging and the mediating effect of employees' psychological ownership between high-involvement human resource management practices and employees' bootlegging.

Discussion

This study makes several contributions to the bootlegging antecedent mechanism research. Specifically, it expands the understanding of the antecedents of bootlegging from a new perspective of human resource management, enriches the bootlegging-promotive cognition path from the perspective of psychological ownership, and enriches the proximal boundary in bootlegging antecedent mechanism from the perspective of individual personality. This study also inspires enterprises in innovation and talent management.

An analysis of the trickle-down effect of supervisor knowledge hiding on subordinate knowledge hiding based on displaced aggression theory

The harm of horizontal knowledge hiding behavior (colleague-colleague) to individuals and organizations has been discussed and confirmed by many studies. The negative consequences of top-down (supervisor-subordinate) knowledge hiding have now emerged as a new focus of research. This study aims to enrich the understanding of the consequences of supervisor knowledge hiding by exploring its trickle-down effect and mechanism. Based on the displaced aggression theory in psychology, this paper analyses and examines the cognitive psychological process and mechanism informing employee knowledge hiding from colleagues when faced with their supervisor's malicious knowledge hiding behavior. Using a three-stage time-lag questionnaire survey strategy, we collect 233 valid samples of full-time employees from representative provinces and cities in China, covering multiple industries. The following findings are observed: (1) Supervisor knowledge hiding from subordinates (SKHS) positively affects subordinate knowledge hiding from colleagues (SKHC); (2) Revenge motivation plays a mediating role; (3) Traditionality weakens the influence of supervisor knowledge hiding on a subordinates' revenge motivation. This study confirms the trickle-down effects of supervisor knowledge hiding behavior, extends research on the consequences of top-down knowledge hiding and its mechanism and provides new insights for organizational practice.

What’s charisma got to do with it? Three faces of charismatic leadership and corporate social responsibility engagement

In response to both internal and external expectations and pressures, companies increasingly consider corporate social responsibility (CSR) as an essential factor in their strategic planning, but in a very diverse manner. To help synthesize the flourishing research in CSR variation across firms, we propose a three-orientation framework to map out a wide range of CSR strategies in current literature. Furthermore, we emphasize the importance of executive leadership and suggest that differences in leader’s values are the key drivers of CSR heterogeneity. This study offers a parsimonious model that maps out three primary pathways between leadership values and CSR strategic configurations. Drawing from charismatic leadership theory, we argue that three distinct types of leader power motives define three modes of leader’s strategic decision frames, which, in turn, influence corresponding CSR orientations. Specifically, socialized charismatic leaders favor prosocial decision frame that results in integrative CSR orientation; neutralized charismatic leaders embrace instrumental decision frame leading to strategic CSR mode; and personalized charismatic leaders tend to adopt self-serving CSR strategies driven by the self-serving decision frame. This holistic view advances the knowledge about the micro-foundations of CSR drivers and the essential role of leader values.

Leader Psychological Need Satisfaction Trickles Down: The Role of Leader-Member Exchange

This article addresses the impact of leader psychological need satisfaction on employees. We draw on the self-determination theory (SDT) and leader-member exchange (LMX) theory to investigate if and how leader psychological need satisfaction trickles down to employee psychological need satisfaction. Adopting a multi-actor, multilevel design, results from 1036 leader-employee dyads indicate that employee-rated LMX mediates the trickle-down effect of leader psychological need satisfaction. Additional analyses of leader psychological needs show that leader competence is the main psychological need that underlying this relationship. We also found an unexpected negative association between leader autonomy need satisfaction and employee competence need satisfaction. Overall, this study shows the importance of both (1) leaders' psychological need satisfaction and (2) employee perceptions of the relationship quality for employee psychological need satisfaction.

Distributed Leadership and New Generation Employees' Proactive Behavior: Roles of Idiosyncratic Deals and Meaningfulness of Work

New generation employees have become the main force of the organization, and their proactive behavior directly affects the organization’s future development. How to effectively stimulate the proactive behavior of new generation employees has become a hot topic in the field of organizational management. Based on the integrated perspective of social exchange and self-enhancement, we constructed a multistep mediation model to explore the influence mechanism of distributed leadership on the proactive behavior of new generation employees. We designed a three-stage research method of supervisor-employee pairing to collect data from 26 supervisors and 304 new generation employees in a new energy vehicle company in East China. Results indicated that (a) distributed leadership is positively related to proactive behavior of new generation employees; (b) idiosyncratic deals and meaningfulness of work mediated the linkage between distributed leadership and new generation employees’ proactive behavior; (c) idiosyncratic deals and meaningfulness of work play a multistep mediation role between distributed leadership and new generation employees’ proactive behavior. These findings have theoretical implications for the proactive behavior literature and managerial implications for practitioners.