Subjects: Psychology >> Management Psychology submitted time 2023-12-22
Abstract： Negative family events and experiences have been major social problems in recent years due to the intersection and influence of technical, economic, and epidemic shocks. Negative family events influence leaders’ family domain and also have a cross-domain effect on leadership behaviors at work. However, there are two contradictory views on the relationship between negative family events and effective leadership behaviors. Some scholars claim a negative effect because of the depletion of leaders’ self-control resources, called the “trapped-by-family effect.” Others propose a positive effect owing to cross-domain compensation, called the “compensation effect.”
The inconsistency in existing literature prompts us to reconcile it using the theory of cross-domain leader identity. We argue that the influence of daily negative family events on leader identity and effective leadership behaviors depends on the leaders’ extraversion levels. Specifically, when leaders have higher levels of extraversion, the compensation effect will come into play; that is, daily negative family events will be positively associated with daily effective leadership behaviors by promoting daily leader identity. In contrast, when leaders have lower levels of extraversion, the trapped-by-family effect will play a role; that is, daily negative family events will be negatively associated with daily effective leadership behaviors by reducing daily leader identity.
To capture within-person variance and test our model, we conducted two experience sampling studies of middle managers across 10 consecutive workdays. In Study 1, participants were middle managers from three merchant banks in three cities. Before initiating the daily survey, participants were asked to complete a basic survey containing demographic questions and an extraversion personality inventory. After matching procedures, 461 observations from 67 managers were included in our final sample. Data analysis supported our hypotheses for both initial structure and transformational leadership that are typical effective leadership behaviors in the literature. In Study 2, we collected data from participants from different regions and industries, and the final sample included 307 observations from 42 managers. The data analysis results showed that negative family events did have both a trapped-by-family effect on leader identity and effective leadership behavior through ego-depletion and a compensation effect on leader identity and effective leadership behavior through compensation.
The theoretical contributions of this paper are fourfold. First, we integrate the inconsistent ideas of the relationship between negative family events and effective leadership behavior using the theory of cross-domain leader identity. We find that the levels of leaders’ extraversion play a vital role in deciding whether negative family events will have a trapped-by-family effect or a compensation effect on effective leadership behavior via leader identity. Second, unlike existing empirical studies, our findings suggest that negative family events will not always lead to negative leadership behaviors. At the within-person level, leaders with high levels of extraversion will exhibit more effective leadership behaviors at work after experiencing negative family events. Third, we extend the current research to further explore the effect of personality on leadership behaviors. Prior studies have suggested that extraversion assists leaders in handling the challenges of work, while we find that extraversion will also promote leaders to actively respond to negative family events by engaging in effective leadership behaviors. Fourth, we also contribute to leader identity studies by shifting its antecedents from work domain to family domain and by exploring the interactive effect of personal and situational factors on leader identity. The present study also provides practical guidance for organizations and leaders to cope with the challenge of negative family events and promote its potential positive effects.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-28 Cooperative journals: 《心理科学进展》
Abstract： Organizational retaliation behaviors, defined as employees' retaliatory behaviors towards the organization and its agents due to unjust treatment of employees, are prevalent in workplaces. A systematic review of the literature identifies several prominent research gaps, such as a lack of integrated framework and ignorance of theoretical mechanisms. This study proposes new underlying mechanisms and enriches the related literature by focusing on the dimensions of perceived justice complexity and perceived justice subject. Future research can further explore other possible mechanisms by integrating self-control, emotions, and resources theoretical perspectives from the angle of observers.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-27 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： A high level of justice perception not only promotes employees’ task performance, organizational citizenship behavior, and creativity, but also reduces their potential organizational retaliation and deviance behavior. To enhance employees’ justice perceptions, first and foremost is ensuring that leaders adhere to justice rules. However, a frustrating reality is that leaders often fail to do so, even when they recognize the importance of justice rule adherence. Thus, in recent years scholars have increasingly focused on explaining the above phenomenon. Scholars adopting an “actor-centric” perspective have found that leaders’ low levels of justice-related traits and justice motives are among the key factors that lead them to violate justice rules. However, a growing number of studies reveal that leaders with both high levels of justice-related traits and justice motives will sometimes violate justice rules. Therefore, scholars have called for moving beyond the “actor-centric” perspective to a “situation- centric” perspective by investigating the role of contextual factors in affecting leaders’ justice behavior. Sherf et al. (2019) were among the first to do so by investigating how leaders’ work overload influences their justice rule adherence. However, there is little research on how political environment may influence leaders’ justice behavior. An organization is not only a workplace for assigning and completing tasks, but also a political site infused with political behavior. Understanding how and when an organization’s political environment may impact leaders’ justice rule adherence has important theoretical implications. To fill the above gaps, in this paper we investigate how political environments affect leaders’ justice rule adherence. Based on the strength model of self-control, we argue that, at the within-person level, leaders’ perceptions of organizational politics (POP) will be positively related to their ego depletion, and their tenure will weaken this positive relationship between POP and ego depletion. Nevertheless, the relationship between leaders’ ego depletion and justice rule adherence (and thus the relationship between leaders’ POP and justice rule adherence via the mediation of ego depletion) depends on their leader identity. To test our theory, we conducted a survey in a large commercial bank in an eastern province of China, using a time-lagged interval-based experience sampling method. Our final sample included 570 observations from 73 branch managers. We analyzed data using MSEM and found that, at the within-person level, leader POP was positively related to ego depletion, and the relationship was moderated by leader position tenure so that it was significant only under low position tenure. Additionally, leader identity moderated the relationship between ego depletion and justice rule adherence so that the relationship was positive under high leader identity and negative under low leader identity. Furthermore, POP had a positive indirect effect on justice rule adherence via ego depletion when tenure was low and leader identity was high, and the indirect effect was negative when both tenure and leader identity were low. We make important theoretical contributions to the “situation-centric” perspective research on justice rule adherence, POP, and the strength model of self-control. First, instead of highlighting the task assignment environment before, we explore the consequence of leaders' embedded political environment on their justice rule adherence. At the same time, different from the previous discussion of the conscious cognitive mechanism, the unconscious self-control mechanism of ego depletion is taken as the mechanism to explain the influence of situational factors on justice rule adherence. Second, this paper is the first, to the best of our knowledge, to verify within-person changes of POP and link it to proactive justice research. Finally, we extend the boundary conditions for understanding how ego depletion affects leader behavior. In addition, this research offers crucial practical implications for how to shape the organizational political environment and direct it to increase leaders' justice behavior.
Subjects: Psychology >> Management Psychology Subjects: Management Science >> Enterprise Management submitted time 2022-09-04
Abstract： A high level of justice perception not only promotes employees’ task performance, organizational citizenship behavior, and creativity, but also reduces their potential organizational retaliation and deviance behavior. To enhance employees’ justice perceptions, first and foremost is ensuring that leaders adhere to justice rules. However, a frustrating reality is that leaders often fail to do so, even when they recognize the importance of justice rule adherence. Thus, in recent years scholars have increasingly focused on explaining the above phenomenon. Scholars adopting an “actor-centric” perspective have found that leaders’ low levels of justice-related traits and justice motives are among the key factors that lead them to violate justice rules. However, a growing number of studies reveal that leaders with both high levels of justice-related traits and justice motives will sometimes violate justice rules. Therefore, scholars have called for moving beyond the “actor-centric” perspective to a “situation-centric” perspective by investigating the role of contextual factors in affecting leaders’ justice behavior. Sherf et al. (2019) were among the first to do so by investigating how leaders’ work overload influences their justice rule adherence. However, there is little research on how political environment may influence leaders’ justice behavior. An organization is not only a workplace for assigning and completing tasks, but also a political site infused with political behavior. Understanding how and when an organization’s political environment may impact leaders’ justice rule adherence has important theoretical implications. To fill the above gaps, in this paper we investigate how political environments affect leaders’ justice rule adherence. Based on the strength model of self-control, we argue that, at the within-person level, leaders’ perceptions of organizational politics (POP) will be positively related to their ego-depletion, and their tenure will weaken this positive relationship between POP and ego-depletion. Nevertheless, the relationship between leaders’ ego-depletion and justice rule adherence (and thus the relationship between leaders’ POP and justice rule adherence via the mediation of ego-depletion) depends on their leader identity. To test our theory, we conducted a survey in a large commercial bank in an eastern province of China, using a time-lagged interval-based experience sampling method. Our final sample included 570 observations from 73 branch managers. We analyzed data using MSEM and found that, at the within-person level, leader POP was positively related to self-depletion, and the relationship was moderated by leader position tenure so that it was significant only under low position tenure. Additionally, leader identity moderated the relationship between self-depletion and justice rule adherence so that the relationship was positive under high leader identity and negative under low leader identity. Furthermore, POP had a positive indirect effect on justice rule adherence via self-depletion when tenure was low and leader identity was high, and the indirect effect was negative when both tenure and leader identity were low. We make important theoretical contributions to the "situation-centric" perspective research on justice rule adherence, POPs, and the strength models of self-control. First, instead of highlighting the task assignment environment before, we explore the consequence of leaders' embedded political environment on their justice rule adherence. At the same time, different from the previous discussion of the conscious cognitive mechanism, the unconscious self-control mechanism of ego-depletion is taken as the mechanism to explain the influence of situational factors on justice rule adherence. Second, this paper is the first, to the best of our knowledge, to verify within-person changes of POP and link it to proactive justice research. Finally, we extend the boundary conditions for understanding how ego-depletion affects leader behavior. In addition, this research offers crucial practical implications for how to shape the organizational political environment and direct it to increase leaders' justice behavior.
Peer Review Status:
Awaiting Review
Subjects: Psychology >> Management Psychology submitted time 2021-06-01
Abstract： " Organizational retaliatory behaviors, defined as employees’ retaliatory behaviors towards the organization and its agents due to unjust treatment toward employees, are a prevalent phenomenon in workplaces. Important progress have been achieved in the existing literature. First, researchers have established the concept and distinguish it from similar concepts. Furthermore, the scales that are respectively suitable for western and Chinese contexts are developed. Second, perception of injustice is identified as the most important antecedent of organizational retaliatory behaviors. Scholars have explored the main and interaction effects of different justice dimensions on organizational retaliatory behaviors from various theoretical perspectives. What is more, several studies have begun to explore the potential negative consequences of organizational retaliatory behaviors. Third, scholars in China have paid attention to this topic and reviewed some literature in this area. Although fruitful progress has been achieved in the past years, there are still some research gaps in the existing literature. First of all, few studies have reviewed existing 20-year literature on organizational retaliatory behaviors systematically. It not only hinders the discourse among existing literature but also prevents the development of future research. Second, current literature mainly focuses on the concepts and the antecedents of organizational retaliatory behaviors. However, the mechanisms that explain the effect of perception of injustice and organizational retaliatory behavior are relatively ignored. It is timely to review the existing literature and propose a new framework to integrate various perspectives given the salience of this topic and the above gaps. We categorize existing research on organizational retaliatory behaviors into four quadrants according to two dimensions. One of the dimensions is the complexity of justice types (one type or interaction of different types), and the other is the subject of injustice perception (receiver and observer). We fill the gaps mentioned above by categorizing, comparing, and integrating the underlying theories and mechanisms in each quadrant. Specifically, we summarize self-control theory, emotion-related theory, social exchange theory, and recent resource theory from the receiver’s perspective. On the other hand, we integrate cognitive and emotional mechanisms from the observer’s perspective. We also compare research from these two perspectives. The authors also propose future research directions by integrating various theories and mechanisms and calling for research from an observer perspective.
Peer Review Status:Awaiting Review
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