Proactive personality and career success

2016 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 467-482 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fu Yang ◽  
Rebecca Chau

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the relation of subordinate proactive personality with subjective evaluations of career success by direct supervisors, as well as conceptualize the quality of leader-member exchange (LMX) as a mediator and power distance orientation as a moderator for understanding this relation. Design/methodology/approach – Data were collected using a two-wave survey research design. Participants were drawn from 360 supervisor-subordinate dyads from mainland China. Hierarchical regression analyses, Edwards and Lambert’s (2007) moderated path analysis approach, and Preacher et al.’s (2010) Monte Carlo simulation procedure were used to test the hypothesized relationships. Findings – LMX mediated the positive relationship between proactive personality and career success. Both the relationship between LMX and career success and the indirect relationship between proactive personality and career success were stronger when power distance orientation was lower. Research limitations/implications – This study contributes to the authors’ understanding of how and when proactive personality facilitates employee career success in the era of the boundaryless career. However, all data were collected within a single organization, which limits the observed variability and decreases external validity. Practical implications – Training employees to facilitate initiative in the workplace may build and maintain better and stronger relationships with their supervisors. To enhance person-organization fit, organizations should recruit and hire employees with lower levels of power distance orientation. Originality/value – This study provides solid evidence that the extent to which LMX mediates the relationship between proactive personality and career success depends on power distance orientation. It represents a promising new direction for the proactive personality and career success literatures.

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaobei Li ◽  
Lu Xing

PurposeThis study's purpose is to examine benevolent leadership's effect on employee silence, as moderated by perceived employee agreement on leader behaviors and cultural value orientations.Design/methodology/approachTwo-wave survey data were collected from 240 Chinese employees working in various industries. Hierarchical regression and simple slope analysis were used to test the hypotheses.FindingsBenevolent leadership was negatively related to employee silence. When perceived employee agreement on leader behaviors was high, employees with high power-distance orientation or low vertical individualism were more sensitive to benevolent leadership and engaged in less silence.Practical implicationsManagers are advised to exhibit benevolent behaviors to mitigate employees' tendency to remain silence. Organizations and managers can also design interventions to encourage employees with low power distance or high vertical individualism to speak up.Originality/valueThis study advances the understanding of the relationship between benevolent leadership and employee silence. By highlighting the moderating role of employees' perception of leader behaviors and their cultural value orientations, this study helps explain the conditions that when employees choose to keep silence or not.


2019 ◽  
Vol 24 (7) ◽  
pp. 717-730 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhen Wang ◽  
Kun Yu ◽  
Ruobing Xi ◽  
Xiaodan Zhang

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of servant leadership on followers’ subjective career success and the mediating role of career skills. The moderating effect of followers’ proactive personality is also investigated. Design/methodology/approach This paper collected two-wave matched data from 283 employees of an IT company. The authors use hierarchical regression and bootstrapping to test the hypotheses. Findings Servant leadership has a positive effect on career satisfaction and perceived employability through career skills. In addition, proactive personality moderates the association between servant leadership and career skills, such that the relationship is stronger when proactive personality is high. Proactive personality also moderates the indirect effect of servant leadership on career satisfaction and perceived employability. Practical implications The findings suggest that organizations should select and train leaders to practice servant leadership to enhance employee subjective career success. Originality/value This is the first study to investigate the mechanism and boundary conditions of the association between servant leadership and employee subjective career success.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruiqian Jia ◽  
Wenan Hu ◽  
Shuwen LI

Purpose The purpose of this study is to examine the potential process through which leadership exerts impacts on organizational innovation. A thorough analysis was conducted by highlighting the contribution of ambidextrous leadership to organizational innovation. Design/methodology/approach Data were collected from companies located in mainland China. A total of 200 cases were included in the final sample. Hierarchical regression analysis was adopted to test the hypotheses in this study. Findings The results showed that exploitation knowledge search and exploration knowledge search partly mediated the relationship between ambidextrous leadership and organizational innovation, respectively. Strategic flexibility could positively moderate the relationship between exploitation knowledge search and organizational innovation and had no significant impacts on moderating the relationship between exploration knowledge search and organizational innovation. Research limitations/implications In this study, not only were managers provided with a sophisticated understanding of how and when ambidextrous leadership could influence organizational innovation but also concrete strategies were given for enhancing organizational innovation. Originality/value In this study, the interaction among ambidextrous leadership, knowledge search and organizational innovation were elucidated and the moderating impacts of strategic flexibility on the relationship between knowledge search and organizational innovation were explored. The findings of this study enriched the literature on leadership, knowledge management and innovation.


2017 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 28-30

Purpose In line with emerging conceptualizations of humility in organizations, the purpose of this paper is to examine how leader humility and distance-based factors [i.e. power distance orientation (PDO) and hierarchical distance] interact to predict follower psychological empowerment. Design/methodology/approach The authors tested the hypotheses using a sample of 294 employees in South Korea. Moderated regression and bootstrapping analyses were conducted to test for direct and moderated relationships. Findings Results indicated that leader humility positively predicted follower psychological empowerment, and followers’ PDO positively moderated this relationship. Results of a three-way interaction indicated that the impact of leader humility on follower psychological empowerment was the strongest when both followers’ levels of PDO and hierarchical distance were high. Originality/value This is the first study to provide empirical evidence for the moderating effect of PDO and hierarchical distance on the relationship between leader humility and follower empowerment. The findings highlight the benefits of understanding the roles of followers’ cultural value orientation and hierarchical position in the effectiveness of leader humility.


2018 ◽  
Vol 56 (9) ◽  
pp. 1991-2005 ◽  
Author(s):  
Israr Ahmad ◽  
Yongqiang Gao

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate the mediating role of psychological empowerment in the relationship between ethical leadership and employee work engagement as well as the moderating effect of power distance orientation.Design/methodology/approachWith a multi-wave survey, this paper uses a sample of 251 employees from the banking sector in Pakistan to test the hypotheses.FindingsThe results reveal that psychological empowerment partially mediates the relationship between ethical leadership and employee work engagement. Besides, power distance orientation mitigates the positive relationship between ethical leadership and psychological empowerment as well as the indirect effect of ethical leadership on employee work engagement via psychological empowerment.Originality/valueThis study contributes to the existing ethical leadership literature by identifying psychological empowerment as an additional mediator and power distance orientation as a boundary condition, in the relationship between ethical leadership and employee work engagement.


2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (5) ◽  
pp. 781-800
Author(s):  
Wenxue Lu ◽  
Yuxin Wei ◽  
Rui Wang

Purpose This paper aims to reveal the effects of an organisation’s bargaining power on its negotiating behaviours (including integrating, obliging, compromising, dominating and avoiding) in the context of inter-organisational conflict in construction projects and investigate how organisational power distance orientation moderates the relationship between the organisation’s bargaining power and its negotiating behaviours. Design/methodology/approach The authors conducted a questionnaire survey among practitioners in the Chinese construction industry with the final sample consisting of 219 responses. A structural equation model was used to analyse the data and test the hypotheses. Findings The results reveal that an organisation’s bargaining power is positively associated with dominating and integrating behaviours but negatively associated with obliging and avoiding behaviours. Additionally, bargaining power is found to be negatively associated with compromising behaviour when the organisation has a high power distance orientation. Finally, a higher degree of power distance orientation strengthens the positive effect bargaining power has on dominating behaviour. Practical implications The findings can help practitioners to predict the negotiating behaviours of a counterpart according to its bargaining power and the power distance in its organisational culture. This can then enable practitioners to adjust their strategies accordingly and steer the negotiations towards a win–win outcome. Originality/value This study applies the approach-inhibition theory of power to inter-organisational negotiations and empirically tests the relationship between an organisation’s bargaining power and its negotiating behaviours in the context of construction projects. Additionally, this study reveals that organisational power distance orientation moderates this relationship.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Chen Yang ◽  
Fu Yang ◽  
Chao Ding

PurposeThe current study examines the effects of leader humor on the creativity of employees by focusing on the mediating role of relational energy and the moderating role of traditionality.Design/methodology/approachThis study used three-wave data from 302 employee–supervisor dyads and tested the hypotheses using hierarchical regression and bootstrapping.FindingsThe results indicated that leader humor was positively associated with employee creativity, relational energy mediated this influence. Besides, traditionality not only moderated the relationship between leader humor and relational energy but also attenuated the indirect relationship between leader humor and employee creativity through relational energy.Practical implicationsLeadership training programs can be used to assist leaders in improving their humorous skills. In addition, supervisors should implement humorous behaviors according to the different levels of traditionality of employees.Originality/valueIntegrating conservation of resource theory, this study provides solid evidence that the extent to which relational energy mediates the relationship between leader humor and employee creativity depends on traditionality. It provides a new direction for leader humor.


2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaoqian Ye ◽  
Zequn Wang ◽  
Yi Zhang ◽  
Huifeng Li

PurposeThis paper aims to explore the moderation effect of person-organization fit and perceived career and repatriation support on the relationship between knowledge governance and knowledge transfer intention of repatriates at multinational corporations.Design/methodology/approachSurvey data were collected from 243 repatriates who had been contacted beforehand from MNCs in China. Hierarchical regression, AMOS, and PROCESS tools were used to examine the data.FindingsThe results revealed that the repatriate knowledge governance mechanism was positively related to repatriate knowledge transfer intentions. What's more, person-organization fit and perceived career and repatriation support significantly moderate the effect of knowledge governance mechanisms on repatriate knowledge transfer intention.Originality/valueThis is the initial empirical research on the influence of person-organization fit and perceived career and repatriation support on the relationship between knowledge governance and repatriate knowledge transfer; it may help readers understand the complex process and relationships associated with repatriate knowledge transfer, and the results may be useful for repatriate knowledge governance in multinational corporations.


2016 ◽  
Vol 39 (6) ◽  
pp. 672-691 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hakan Erkutlu ◽  
Jamel Chafra

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between leader’s behavioral integrity and employees’ organizational identification as well as to test the moderating roles of power distance and organizational politics on that relationship. Design/methodology/approach Data encompass 969 employees from 19 five-star hotels in Turkey. The relationship between behavioral integrity and organizational identification and the moderating roles of power distance and organizational politics on that relationship were tested using the partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) and moderated hierarchical regression analyses. Findings The PLS-SEM and moderated hierarchical regression analyses results reveal that there was a significant positive relationship between leader’s behavioral integrity and employees’ organizational identification. In addition, the positive relationship between behavioral integrity and organizational identification was weaker when both power distance and organizational politics were higher compared to that when they were lower. Practical implications This study showed that leader’s behavioral integrity enhanced employees’ organizational identification. Leaders need to show the perceived alignment between their words and deeds and strive to form high quality leader–follower exchanges to create a trust-based culture that satisfies the necessary affective and cognitive components required for trust formation. Moreover, the results of this study indicated that perceived organizational politics weakened employees’ identification with their organizations. Organizational practices and policies, especially human resource practices, should be carefully designed and implemented as to prevent organizational politics, an important source of employee dissatisfaction and distrust. Originality/value The study provides new insights into the influence that leader’s behavioral integrity may have on employees’ organizational identification and the moderating roles of power distance and organizational politics in the link between behavioral integrity and employees’ identification with their organizations. This paper also offers a practical assistance to employees in the hospitality industry and their leaders interested in fostering organizational identification and lowering perceived organizational politics.


2021 ◽  
pp. 232948842110112
Author(s):  
Albi Alikaj ◽  
Doreen Hanke

The study examines the relationship between leaders’ use of motivating language and their workers’ perceived interactional justice, that is, interpersonal and informational justice. The study also examines the influence of workers’ levels of power distance and uncertainty avoidance orientations on these relationships. We test the proposed model by conducting structural equation modeling using data from a sample of 505 participants. The findings show a positive relationship between leaders’ use of motivating language and their workers’ perceived interpersonal and informational justice. Furthermore, the study confirms our hypotheses that workers’ power distance orientation negatively moderates the relationship between leaders’ use of motivating language and workers’ perceived interpersonal justice and that workers’ uncertainty avoidance orientation negatively moderates the relationship between leaders’ use of motivating language and workers’ perceived informational justice.


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