Servant leadership and employee voice behavior: the role of employee work reflection and employee proactive personality

Despite the recent proliferation of scholarly investigations on servant leadership, clarity remains elusive regarding the specific mechanisms and conditions underpinning employee cognitive processes and their responses to servant leadership. Drawing upon social cognitive theory, proposes a moderated mediation model tested through a time-lagged field data from 489 employees in Study 1 and an experimental data in Study 2. We found that servant leadership indirectly enhances employee voice behavior through increased employee work reflection. Additionally, we considered employee proactive personality as a boundary condition for the positive effect of servant leadership. Our results show that servant leadership prompts employee work reflection only when the level of employee proactive personality is high, which in turn increases employee voice behavior. This study presents significant theoretical and practical implications through the integration of social cognitive theory with servant leadership research.

Individual characteristics on multicultural team performance: does the role played by leaders and team members matter?

The main purpose of this study was to analyze the impact of individual characteristics of cultural sensitivity, adaptability, cohesion, and cultural diversity on the multicultural team performance. Also, we analyzed the moderating effect of being a team member or a team leader on the relationships mentioned above. To test out hipotheses, data were collected from 415 members of multicultural teams specifically, from 304 team members and 111 leaders. The findings provided evidence to support a positive relationship between cultural sensitivity, adaptability, cohesion, and team performance. Cultural diversity did not show a significant impact on team performance. The study also showed that the leaders and members had different perceptions about the factors that influence team performance. For instance, team members consider that cohesion influences team performance, while leaders consider adaptability as the key factor to achieve performance. Main implications from findings are discussed.

Work conflict: Another trigger to smartphone addiction of individuals with high rumination?

With the widespread use of smartphones, many people spend much time on smartphones for shopping, learning, socializing, and so on, which can affect an individual's mental health and work performance. Especially, individual perceived conflict at work may increase their social anxiety and thus raise the risk of their smartphone addiction. This study collected data from 577 corporate employees in China through convenience sampling to explain the influence mechanism of work conflict on smartphone addiction and to verify the moderating role of rumination. Statistical results show that relationship conflicts, task conflicts, and process conflicts positively affect smartphone addiction by enhancing social anxiety. Moreover, rumination positively moderates the relationship between work conflict and smartphone addiction. People with high rumination are more likely to escape reality due to conflict at work, which further enhances their smartphone addiction behaviors. Our study suggests that a relatively harmonious working atmosphere should be established within organizations, especially for employees with rumination. Work conflict is a predisposing factor for social anxiety and smartphone addiction in individuals with high rumination.

How Inclusive Leadership Influences Voice Behavior in Construction Project Teams: A Social Identity Perspective

Voice behavior of project team members (PTMs), defined as the process in which PTMs proactively share ideas, concerns, and opinions about work-related issues to improve the status quo of projects, is pivotal but underexplored in construction projects. Using social identity theory, this study investigated how inclusive leadership influences PTMs’ voice behavior with survey data from 232 construction PTMs. The results indicated that inclusive leadership predicts PTMs’ promotive and prohibitive voice behavior, whereas project identification mediates both relationships. Team coordination strengthens such indirect impacts of inclusive leadership on PTMs’ prohibitive voice. Theoretical and practical implications of these empirical findings are discussed.

Exploring the relationships between team leader’s conflict management styles and team passion: From the emotional perspective

From the emotional perspective, this study explores how team leader’s conflict management styles affect team passion. A theoretical model is constructed which describes the mediating role of positive team emotional climate and the moderating impact of team emotional intelligence. We collect 101 teams paired data including 101 team leaders and 383 team members to test theoretical model. It is shown that leader’s cooperative conflict management style has a significant positive effect on both positive team emotional climate and team passion. Meanwhile, positive team emotional climate plays a mediating role between leader’s cooperative conflict management style and team passion. In addition, team emotional intelligence has a moderating effect between leader’s cooperative style and positive team emotional climate. This study not only provides a new perspective for follow-up research but also expands the research scope of impacts of conflict management styles. In addition, this study forms the underlying mechanism of team leader’s conflict management styles on team passion from the emotional perspective and investigates the mediating effect and moderating effect of emotional variable, which broadens the research on the mechanisms of conflict management styles on team outcomes to a certain extent.

Multicultural experience in organisations: an auto-ethnographic enquiry

Purpose

This paper aims to draw attention to multicultural experience as a manager. It is an auto-ethnographic enquiry which comprises own experiences and intercultural and intra-cultural engagement of the author’s self in both mono-cultural and multicultural environments drawing from archival records of personal account of experience.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper adopted auto-ethnographic enquiry of the author’s experience in multicultural environment. The auto-ethnography as a research method is discussed along with its criticisms, validity, reliability and generalisability.

Findings

The findings include power distance, elitism in hiring practices, inclusivity of women, challenges in South Asian Muslim countries, challenges in the non-anglophone country and their implications for a practitioner.

Research limitations/implications

As the author employed an auto-ethnographic enquiry based on the author’s prior experience, this raises questions about wider generalisability and applicable contexts. Findings of the enquiry can be tested using further qualitative enquiries such as in-depth interviews with a sample of stakeholders in a multicultural environment.

Practical implications

The paper provides insights useful in managing in multicultural environments discussed. Also, it provides implications for policy makers in organisations. Practitioners can use the paper to get an insight into the markets the author already have been to and use the learning for decision-making during market development efforts.

Originality/value

Auto-ethnography in multicultural environment is scant. This auto-ethnographical enquiry provides original content of practitioner experience compared with the related theory.

An Exploratory Factor Analysis for Conflict Resolution Methods among Construction Professionals

This paper aims to evaluate various methods of resolving conflict among construction professionals (CPs) in Nigeria. A quantitative research technique was utilised. This study used well-structured questionnaires which were forwarded to numerous CPs in the Southwest of Nigeria. A total of 150 questionnaires were sent out and 135 were received back from respondents. The research revealed some major approaches to conflict resolution among the CPs, such as collaborating, accommodating, negotiating, compromising, mediating, arbitrating, mediating-arbitrating, contending, obliging, early neutral evaluation and avoiding. This study is limited to construction professionals (CPs) that are members of Nigerian professional bodies and just 135 respondents took part in the survey. This study recommends that further studies should use other analysis methods to assess conflict resolution techniques among the CPs. The results from this study will enhance the knowledge of CPs in Nigeria of numerous methods of resolving conflict. Furthermore, the outcomes will help CPs make use of collaborating and accommodating in settling conflict within their individual professional bodies. Previous studies on conflict resolution methods only concentrated on contractors and consultants in construction projects but this present study contributes to the body of knowledge by assessing conflict resolution methods among CPs within their individual professional bodies. Additionally, the exploratory factor analysis (EFA) utilised in this study is novel since previous studies have not employed this analysis method. Therefore, it is recommended that CPs should be collaborating with one another in order to solidify their relationship and enhance their performance within their professional bodies.

Performance Prediction of Construction Projects Based on the Causes of Claims: A System Dynamics Approach

Conflict in human relations is unavoidable; therefore, it can occur in construction projects that are full of many human relationships. These conflicts can lead to claims if interlocutors do not agree. The main result of the claims is the delay and overrun of costs in construction projects. Additionally, poor management of claims affects the success of construction projects and their budget and schedule. Moreover, controlling claims ensures the successful completion of construction projects and minimizes delays and disputes. This study sought to improve the project performance by ranking the causes of claims and examining their impacts on Key Performance Indicators (KPI) using the combined AHP-TOPSIS (Analytic Hierarchy Process-Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution) method. Given that construction projects are constantly evolving and becoming more complex and have many linear and nonlinear relationships and structures, these projects can be considered as a kind of system dynamics. The system dynamics have been used for nearly four decades to analyze and improve the performance of construction projects. This study attempted to provide a model with a system dynamics approach to predict the performance of construction projects based on the reasons for the claim. In this model, the most important performance indicators, interactions between them, and the relationship of these indicators with the reasons for claiming were simulated. The results showed that delays are the most important reasons for making claims, and they have a great impact on the KPIs such as scheduling, sustainability, customer satisfaction, quality, and team satisfaction, respectively. In the modeling and simulation discussion in this study, the proposed model simulated the dependencies between the KPIs of construction projects and their changes over time and provides a better understanding of how performance indicators interact with each other. Additionally, it can be used as a basis for simulating different management policies to find the best solution to prevent and correct the negative effects of poor performance.

The Effect of Political Skill on Relationship Quality in Construction Projects: The Mediating Effect of Cooperative Conflict Management Styles

Negative consequences can arise if interpersonal conflicts in construction projects are not handled properly. This study aims to investigate the relationship among political skill, cooperative conflict management styles, and relationship quality. Multiple regressions were used to test the hypothesis based on 206 items of data collected from construction project practitioners in China. Results demonstrate the mechanism of action among political skill, conflict management styles, and relationship quality and verify the mediating effect of cooperative conflict management styles, providing enlightenment for future research on conflict management.

How Cooperation Reinforces Conflict Over Time

Managing projects raises multiple tensions such as the need to balance cooperativeness and assertiveness. By adopting a process perspective, we analyze why a project group consisting of three heterogeneous subgroups is failing to uphold such balance over time. Instead, overemphasizing cooperativeness in the early phases of the project led to over-assertiveness and escalation of group conflict. We identify three mechanisms for reinforcing dynamics. First, we find that subgroups overestimate other subgroups’ behavioral autonomy, which promotes holding simplified, negative images of each other. Second, subgroups adopt vertical disidentification when they define their own particular role. Third, cooperativeness conceals pejorative perceptions.