Influence of Authentic Leadership on Employees' Taking Charge Behavior: The Roles of Subordinates' Moqi and Perspective Taking

The effect of benevolent leadership on safety behavior: A moderated mediation model

INTRODUCTION

While high quality leadership is of great importance for enhancing safety behavior in the workplace, there has been a lack of research on how benevolent leadership influences such behavior. Subordinates' moqi (i.e., their unspoken understanding of the work expectations, intentions, and requirements of their superiors) and safety climate were introduced to examine this relationship.

METHOD

Based on implicit followership theory, this study explores the relationship between benevolent (well meaning, kindly) leadership and employees' safety behavior, as well as the mediating role of subordinates' moqi and the moderating role of safety climate. 608 employees of a petroleum company in China were randomly selected as participants, and the data were collected in two stages.

RESULTS

The results showed that: (1) Benevolent leadership is positively correlated with employees' safety behavior. (2) Subordinates' moqi mediates between benevolent leadership and employees' safety behavior. (3) Safety climate moderates the mediating role of subordinates' moqi between benevolent leadership and employees' safety behavior. (4) The positive effect of subordinates' moqi on employees' safety behavior is enhanced under a positive safety climate.

CONCLUSIONS

Benevolent leadership is an effective leadership style that enhances employees' safety behaviors by promoting a moqi state between supervisors and subordinates. The invisible environmental climate, in particular, the safety climate, should be a key focus in the promotion of safety behaviors.

PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS

This study further broadens the research perspective of employee safety behavior from the perspective of implicit followership theory. It also provides practical guidance for improving employee safety behavior, namely selecting and cultivating benevolent leaders, enhancing subordinates' moqi, and actively fostering a positive organizational safety climate.

Exploring the role of individual-focused transformational leadership in facilitating taking charge: mediating mechanism of psychological capital and thriving at work

Purpose

Drawing on the “conservation of resources” theory, the current study examines the mechanisms by which individual-focused transformational leadership (i.e. individualized consideration and intellectual stimulation) is associated with employees' taking charge by investigating the mediating roles of psychological capital and thriving at work.

Design/methodology/approach

A three-wave research study was conducted, and the data for the study included 220 employees’-supervisors’ dyads from Indian IT (information technology) organizations. Further, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was utilized to assess the measurement model, and study hypotheses were tested using Process macro.

Findings

The study results showed that individual-focused transformational leadership (IFTL) is strongly associated with psychological capital, thriving at work and taking charge. The findings of Process macro analyses indicated that IFTL, directly and indirectly, impacts taking charge behavior via psychological capital and thriving at work.

Practical implications

The study offers significant practical implications to managers, counsellors and HRM practitioners for crafting workplace interventions to augment employees taking charge behavior. The study findings would aid HRM practitioners in designing individualized-oriented leadership programs for building employees' positive psychological capabilities and thriving experiences for taking charge.

Originality/value

This paper broadens the existing leadership literature by proposing new pathways through which IFTL encourages employees to take charge. Mainly, research studies need to shed more light on leadership characteristics that influence employees' positive psychological behavior, that is psychological capital and thriving at work. Consequently, this study examined the underlying mechanism through which leadership, psychological capital and thriving interact to stimulate employees taking charge behavior.

Beyond the call of duty: how servant leadership promotes discretionary and constructive efforts to effect workplace functional change

Purpose

Given the intensified need to be responsive to change, employees' discretionary and constructive efforts, such as those aimed at effecting workplace functional change (i.e. taking charge), are required to enhance organizational effectiveness. Therefore, the authors reckon that due to their serving attitude of prioritizing the needs of others above the self and their motivational qualities, the servant leadership approach can enhance the confidence of subordinates' capabilities to perform a range of meaningful activities (i.e. role breadth self-efficacy; RBSE), which in turn should facilitate their engagement in taking charge.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors collected data from 324 leader-subordinate dyads (i.e. academicians) from two federal universities in Nigeria. The authors assessed the measurement and structural models with partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM).

Findings

This study found that servant leadership and RBSE were crucial enablers of subordinates' taking charge. Furthermore, a positive relationship between servant leadership and RBSE was found. Lastly, RBSE was a partial mediating mechanism partly underlying the positive relationship between servant leadership and taking charge.

Practical implications

Selecting and training leaders to practice servant leadership in Nigerian public universities may serve as a springboard for employees to take charge because it also enables them to develop their RBSE.

Originality/value

The current study sheds light on the psychological process through which servant leadership affects subordinates' taking charge by identifying RBSE as a crucial motivational state partly underlying the process.

Mechanisms of knowledge workers’ adaptive perfectionism on taking charge

Purpose

This study aims to explore the mechanisms of adaptive perfectionism on employees’ taking charge (TC), the mediating role of work family enrichment and the moderating role of perceived organizational support (OS) in the relationship between adaptive perfectionism and employees’ TC.

Design/methodology/approach

This study is based on 305 knowledge workers working in diverse organizations in China to examine the hypotheses.

Findings

The results showed that adaptive perfectionism had a significant positive effect on employees’ TC. Both directions of work-family enrichment (WFE) and family-work enrichment (FWE) play a mediating role between adaptive perfectionism and employees’ TC. Perceived OS moderates the relationship between WFE/FWE and employees’ TC. Perceived OS moderates the indirect effects of adaptive perfectionism on employees’ TC through WFE and FWE.

Originality/value

This study explores the impact of adaptive perfectionism on employees’ TC, expands the scope of existing perfectionism research, enriches the research on adaptive perfectionism outcome variables and provides evidence and reference for follow-up research.

Authentic Leadership and Taking Charge Behavior: A Moderated Mediation Model of Psychological Capital and Occupational Calling

To achieve sustainable development goals, it is necessary to establish a positive organization so that employees can pay attention to their strengths and talents and engage in more proactive behaviors, such as taking charge behavior. Taking charge behavior involves the voluntary and constructive effort of employees to make organizationally functional change, which may consume more scarce resources of employees. Previous studies have shown that support from leaders can promote employees' taking charge behavior, but most of them are from the perspective of social exchange. By drawing on the conservation of resources theory, we develop a theoretical model in which authentic leadership can provide employees with more positive resources and guide them into gain spiral of resources. We conducted two-wave questionnaire surveys to collect data from 199 employees and their supervisors at 16 companies in China. The results showed that authentic leadership was positively associated with employee taking charge via the mediation role of psychological capital. Furthermore, the direct and indirect relationship between authentic leadership and employee taking charge was demonstrated to be stronger when employees have a higher stage of occupational calling. This study provides a new explanation for the mechanism of authentic leadership and clarifies the boundary conditions of authentic leadership effectiveness.