Subjects: Psychology >> Management Psychology submitted time 2024-04-15
Abstract： As a kind of important strategic talent capital, star employees only occupy a small proportion of the organizational staff, but make an extremely high contribution to the organization. Star employees can contribute to the organizational value creation activities not only through their direct disproportionately high and prolonged performance, social capital, and visibility, but also via exerting extensive and profound influences on their colleagues, that is, star employees’ ripple effects. Based on a systematic literature review, this study draws upon the theoretical framework of social influence to specifically elaborate how star employees generate proximal ripple effects on their nonstar team members and the whole team, and then how to generate distal ripple effects on external-team colleagues in the organizational context. Further, this study also explores the boundary conditions of these ripple effects from the perspectives of human resource management practice and star employees’ interpersonal characteristic. Specifically, we proposed three research modules, including four theoretical models. Our theoretical framework will not only be helpful for scholars to gain a more comprehensive and deep understanding about how star employees exert positive or negative social influences on organizational value creation, but also provide valuable suggestions on the star employee management practices for Chinese organizations.
Subjects: Psychology >> Management Psychology submitted time 2024-01-13
Abstract： Star employees can enhance the organizational value creation not only through their direct and disproportionate contribution, but also by their extensive and profound influence on colleagues via interpersonal interaction. Current research primarily focuses on the interpersonal effect of stars on non-star employees; however, investigations into the interpersonal dynamics between star employees and their leaders remain limited. Based on social interdependence theory and dominance complementarity theory, this study built a moderated mediation model to explore the “double-edged sword” mechanisms and boundary condition of the interpersonal interaction of star employees on team leader. We designed a scenario experiment and a field study to test the model.
In the scenario experiment (Study 1), we manipulated “the subordinate’s stardom” (i.e., star or non-star) and “the subordinate’s dominance trait” (i.e., high or low), resulting in a 2 by 2 categories of the scenarios. Data was collected from the participants in an Executive Development Program hosted by a Chinese university through an online questionnaire platform (https://www.wjx.cn). The final sample size was 356. The results revealed that: (1) Through the mechanism of leader’s trust in subordinate, the subordinate’s stardom had a positive influence on his or her leader’s empowerment (tendency) and a negative impact on the leader’s ostracism (tendency); via the mechanism of perceived threat to status, the subordinate’s stardom negatively affected his or her leader’s empowerment (tendency) and positively influenced the leader’s ostracism (tendency). (2) The subordinate’s dominance trait moderated the relationship between the subordinate’s stardom and the leader’s perceived threat to status, such that the more dominant of the subordinate, the more likely the leader perceived threat to status caused by the subordinate’s stardom, thus exhibiting less empowerment (tendency) and more ostracism (tendency) toward the subordinate.
To replicate these findings and increase their external validities, we then conducted a multi-source, multi-wave field study. Employees and their direct supervisors from a Chinese new material manufacturing company were invited to participate in our survey. We collected the data at two time points (i.e., a one-month time lag) through another online questionnaire platform (https://end.huajuetech.com). The paired sample size was 291. Study 2 replicated most of the findings in Study 1, except for the non-significant indirect effect of subordinate’s stardom on leader’s empowerment behavior through perceived threat to status.
In summary, our study makes three important theoretical contributions: (1) We clarified the consequences and mechanisms of star employees’ interpersonal interaction on team leaders, thereby enriching research on the interpersonal effect of star employees. (2) By examining the boundary conditions of stars’ impact on team leaders, our study prompted scholars and managers to explore how to build a proper work context to leverage stars’ value. (3) Our study aided leadership researchers to further investigate the antecedents of positive or negative leadership behaviors (i.e., empowerment and ostracism) from the perspective of “the interpersonal relationship between a leader and the key minority subordinates”.
Subjects: Psychology >> Developmental Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： In the era of rapid development of the digital economy, leadership empowerment behavior is an important practice with which to motivate employees. However, prior studies have shown inconsistent findings regarding its effectiveness. To deeply investigate the impacts of leadership empowerment behavior on employees, we aim to systematically examine the mechanism of the “double-edged sword” impact of leadership empowerment behavior on employees based on conservation resource theory (COR). First, from the perspective of resources, empowerment is regarded as a kind of resource that leaders provide to their employees. Then we thoroughly analyze the “enabling” and “burdening” mechanisms induced by leadership empowerment behavior. The regulatory focus of employees is considered the boundary condition that influence the “double-edged sword” impact. Second, leadership empowerment behavior is thought to be dynamically changing. We explore the ways in which daily leadership empowerment behavior and the fluctuation of leadership empowerment behavior cause the “double-edged sword” effect. Third, we consider the organizational context in which leadership empowerment behavior plays a dynamically changing role. We explore how the relative dynamic situation, namely, work events, moderates the “double-edged sword” effect of leadership empowerment behavior. We aim to combine static and dynamic perspectives to systematically explore the mechanism of the “double-edged sword” impact of leadership empowerment behavior on employees, contributing to both academic research and practical implications.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： In recent years, “How to improve team innovative performance?” is a popular topic in both management practice and academia fields. Because innovation is an ambidextrous activity including both “exploration” and “exploitation”, understanding how to balance the paradoxical relationship between them is crucial to improve team innovative performance. Based on a micro-perspective of team members’ cognitive styles, “compositional approach” and “configurational approach” were adopted to explore how to reconcile this kind of paradox. Specifically, (1) the complementary effects between members’ cognitive composition and team leader behaviors will contribute to the reconciliation of team innovation paradox; (2) an appropriate “members’ cognitive styles-work role requirements” configuration incorporated with a high level of team coordination climate will be useful to reconcile team innovation paradox. Further, based on the ideology of yin-yang philosophy, the mechanism embedded in the process of reconciling team innovation paradox was also studied. To justify the relevant theoretical propositions, three sub-projects will be conducted to examine the proposed research model with both quantitative and qualitative methods. The findings will not only enrich two streams of literature regarding exploration of the antecedents of team innovation and the approaches to management paradox from a micro perspective, but also provide suggestions on the innovation management practices of companies.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： Facing the complex challenges from the environment, if organizations want to survive and develop continuously, they must insist on innovation. Employee creative performance affects the innovation of the entire organization deeply. Thus, managers, scholars, or policymakers are paying more and more attention to employee creative performance. Among the factors that affect employees’ innovation, leadership style plays a vital role. Plenty of leadership styles (e.g., transformational, transactional, and authentic leadership) may influence employee creative performance. Which kind of leadership style has a higher correlation with employee creative performance? To answer this question, drawing on self-determination theory (SDT), we proposed a theoretical framework, to explain the differences of correlations between different leadership and employee creative performance. To begin with, we hypothesized that transformational leadership, transactional leadership, authentic leadership, ethical leadership, servant leadership, inclusive leadership, empowering leadership, and leader-member exchange are positively related to employee creative performance. Among these leadership styles, authentic leadership had the highest correlation. Then, we hypothesized in the following situations(1) when the sample comes from a country with high individualism, (2) when the creative performance is evaluated by others, and (3) when the data is collected at multiple time points, the correlations between leadership style and employee creative performance were lower. Finally, we detected the potential moderating effects of the measurement of leadership and creative performance We used meta-analysis to summarize evidences from 432 independent empirical studies (229 Chinese studies and 203 English studies, with a total sample size of 161599 to test our hypothesis. To begin with, we searched the studies from multi-databases. Then, we coded the necessary information from the previous survey studies. Next, the Hunter-Schmidt random effect meta-analysis method was used to correct statistical artifacts (e.g., measuring error and sampling error) and evaluate the true score correlations. Finally, subgroup analysis was used to detect the potential moderating effects. The results showed that: (1) transactional leadership (ρ = 0.273), ethical leadership (ρ = 0.300), transformational leadership (ρ = 0.364), servant leadership (ρ = 0.400), leader-member exchange(ρ = 0.401), empowering leadership (ρ = 0.402), inclusive leadership (ρ = 0.457), and authentic leadership (ρ = 0.475) had significant positive correlations with employee creative performance, and their correlations showed an upward trend; (2) individualism, methods of performance appraisal, the time point of data collection, measurement of leadership, measurement of employee creative performance and publication language partially moderated the relationship between leadership styles and employee creative performance. Based on the SDT, this research proposed a theoretical model to explain the different effects of different leadership styles on employee creative performance and test the model robustly based on the meta-analysis technology. Therefore, the theoretical implication of this research mainly focuses on this model. First, this research promotes the development of theories related to leadership styles and employee creative performance. Second, this research promotes the development of self-determination theory and expands the scope of application of self-determination theory. The practical implication is that, when organizations need employees to show higher creative performance, managers can try to adopt the authentic leadership style.
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