While there is some evidence on the outcomes of employee-organization exchange relationships and leader-member exchange (LMX) relationships, less is known about their combined role as predictors of ...employee outcomes. Relying on a recent conceptualization of social leader-member exchange (SLMX) and economic leader-member exchange (ELMX) as two separate dimensions of LMX, the present study explored whether SLMX and ELMX moderate the associations between organizational social and economic exchange and affective commitment. The main finding was that the association between organizational economic exchange and affective commitment is attenuated by SLMX. In addition, a positive association between intrinsic motivation and affective commitment was also unveiled, suggesting that affective commitment is not only determined by the prosocial motivation emanating from social exchange relationships, but also from the intrinsic motivation inherent in the work itself.
Abstract The COVID‐19 crisis has been associated with existential concerns regarding mortality. These concerns, described as ‘mortality cues’, can influence people's emotions, behaviours, and the ...quality of leadership in organizations. Using the contingency model of death awareness (CMDA; Grant and Wade‐Benzoni, 2009), we provide new evidence on how mortality cues can incite negative and positive leadership behaviours via two forms of death awareness: death anxiety and death reflection. Specifically, we theorize that mortality cues can increase leader death anxiety, giving rise to leader expediency (a leader's use of unethical practices to expedite work for self‐serving purposes); however, mortality cues can also facilitate leader death reflection and, consequently, servant leadership behaviour. We further suggest that leaders’ responses to mortality cues depend on their psychological capital (PsyCap), such that leaders with high (vs. low) PsyCap respond to mortality cues with less expediency (via death anxiety) and more servant leader behaviours (via death reflection). We support our hypotheses through three separate studies using an experiment, time‐lagged data from healthcare workers, and daily diary data from non‐healthcare professionals. We conclude that mortality cues have a double‐edged influence on leadership behaviour. We also discuss the theoretical and practical implications of the findings.
Are leaders more promotable when they show servant or directive leadership - and does this hold for women and men alike? Servant leaders are likely seen as more effective, likable, and thus ...promotable but less prototypical than directive leaders. We argue that differing degrees of communion (i.e., warmth, morality) and agency (i.e., competence, dominance) underlie the relationship of servant and directive leadership with leaders' promotability. Based on expectancy-violation theory, we assume that men benefit more from servant leadership and women benefit more from directive leadership. Servant leadership aligns more with communion and stereotypes about women. In contrast, directive leadership aligns more with agency and stereotypes about men. These differences may result in gender-biased evaluations threatening fairness in leadership promotions. In a pre-study, servant leadership was more expected of women leaders than of men leaders. However, directive leadership was equally expected of women leaders and men leaders. An experimental vignette study (
= 454) revealed that servant leaders were seen as more effective, likable, and promotable than directive leaders, regardless of gender. Perceived leader warmth, morality, and competence were positively, and dominance was negatively, related to leader effectiveness and leader liking, which were positively related to leader promotability. We also investigated whether raters' gender role beliefs influenced the evaluations, which they did not (as reported in the Supplementary material). Concluding, women and men profit equally from exhibiting servant compared to directive leadership.
The leader self‐sacrifice literature has largely drawn on the norm of reciprocity to examine the positive impacts of leader self‐sacrifice on employee attitudes and behaviours, but little attention ...has been paid to the potential negative impacts of leader self‐sacrifice on leaders’ own work outcomes. Grounded in social exchange theory and ego depletion theory, our research focuses on why leader self‐sacrifice brings about both beneficial and detrimental effects and considers how leader competence shapes these effects. Two field studies were conducted to test our hypotheses. Study 1 explored the underlying mechanisms through which leader self‐sacrifice influences team/leader work engagement. Study 2 replicated and extended the findings of Study 1 by further testing the moderating role of leader competence. Our results indicated that team affective commitment to leaders acts as a key mediator of the positive relationship between leader self‐sacrifice and team work engagement, and that leader depletion serves as a crucial mechanism underlying the negative relationship between leader self‐sacrifice and leader work engagement. Additionally, leader competence affects how team members view self‐sacrificing leaders and the extent to which self‐sacrificing leaders consume their energy. For competent leaders, the positive influence of leader self‐sacrifice on team work engagement (via team affective commitment to leaders) is stronger, and the negative influence of leader self‐sacrifice on leader work engagement (via leader depletion) is weaker.
Practitioner points
To avoid self‐sacrificing leaders being seriously depleted, organizations should design activities or training programmes to help leaders replenish self‐control resources and, if possible, increase their self‐control capacity.
To encourage team members’ investment in their work, leaders may need to establish psychological attachment and bonds with members to motivate them to repay sacrificial behaviours by fully engaging in the work.
Organizations can provide systematic training to enhance leader competence to magnify the beneficial impacts and buffer the detrimental impacts of leader self‐sacrifice.
The dissonant development of positive and negative lightning leaders is a central question in atmospheric electricity. It is also the likely root cause of other reported asymmetries between positive ...and negative lightning flashes, including the ones regarding: stroke multiplicity, recoil activity, leader velocities, and emission of energetic radiation. In an effort to contrast lightning leaders of different polarities, we highlight the staggering differences between two rocket‐triggered lightning flashes. The flash beginning with upward positive leaders exhibits an initial continuous current stage followed by multiple sequences of dart leaders and return strokes. On the other, in its opposite‐polarity counterpart, the upward development of negative leaders is by itself the entire flash. As a result, the flash with negative leaders is faster, briefer, transfers less charge to the ground, has lower currents, and smaller spatial extent. We conclude by presenting a discussion on the three fundamental leader propagation modes.
Plain Language Summary
Lightning flashes that carry positive and negative charges are completely different. In this article, we report on lightning triggered by launching a rocket tethered to the ground toward an electrified cloud. The staggering differences between positive and negative flashes are exposed by a three‐dimensional radio location system and by the current transferred to ground via the trailing wire.
Key Points
Triggered flashes with positive and negative leaders are contrastingly different with the latter being faster, briefer, and more compact
The channel behind triggered positive leaders decays engendering dart leaders and return strokes, which is unparalleled in the negative case
Average conductivity is higher in the negative leader channel despite the lack of return strokes and the lower charge transferred to ground
Purpose Based on the moral licensing theory, this study aims to reveal the mechanism of self-sacrificial leadership inducing abusive supervision from two paths of leader moral credit and leader moral ...credential. At the same time, it also discusses the moderating effect of leader behavioral integrity on the two paths. Design/methodology/approach In this study, 434 employees and their direct leaders from six Chinese companies were investigated in a paired survey at three time points, and the empirical data was analyzed using Mplus 7.4 software. Findings Self-sacrificial leadership has a positive effect on leader abusive supervision through the mediating role of leader moral credit and leader moral credential. In addition, this study also finds that leader behavioral integrity is the “gate” for self-sacrificial leadership to promote abusive supervision, and the leader behavioral integrity has a moderating effect on the process of self-sacrificial leadership influencing on leader moral credit and leader moral credential. Originality/value This study explores the evolution of self-sacrificial leadership from “good” to “bad” from the perspective of moral licensing and broadens the research on the mechanism and boundary conditions of self-sacrificial leadership. At the same time, it also provides important reference value for preventing the negative effects of self-sacrificial leadership in organizations.
In this article, drawing from a relational perspective, we explore the relationship between moral leadership and employee creativity, treat employee identification with leader and leader–member ...exchange (LMX) as two mediators, and develop a new theoretical model of employee creativity. Our data collected from 160 supervisor–subordinate dyads in the People's Republic of China demonstrate that moral leadership is positively related to both employee identification with leader and LMX. Further, employee identification with leader partially mediates the relationship between moral leadership and LMX. In particular, employee identification with leader greatly enhances LMX which leads to high creativity. Overall, the relationship between moral leadership and employee creativity is mediated by not only employee identification with leader but also LMX. Our findings offer a new theoretical framework for future theory development and testing on creativity as well as practical implications for researchers and managers in business ethics.
Despite the importance of ethical leadership, the impacts of its different facets on firm-level performance are unclear. Drawing on the resource-based view of the firm and the group engagement model, ...we propose that ethical leadership consisting of leader humane orientation, leader responsibility and sustainability orientation and leader moderation orientation are beneficial to firm performance, and leader justice orientation plays moderating roles. We empirically tested this theoretical framework employing multi-source survey data collected from 264 Chinese firms. The findings reveal that both leader humane orientation and leader responsibility and sustainability orientation have positive influences on both firm financial and social performance, while leader moderation orientation only has positive influence on firm financial performance. In addition, leader justice orientation positively moderates the relationship between leader humane orientation and leader responsibility and sustainability orientation and financial performance as well as the relationship between leader moderation orientation and social performance. These findings provide theoretical and practical implications for understanding how different facets of ethical leadership jointly function to influence firm performance.
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