Research Of Employee Power Recognition And Its Influence On Employee Behaviors

The advancement in science & techonology and the development of knowledge economy bring about increasingly flattened organizational structures; as a result, organizations turn to value not only employee participation, but also teamwork and empowerment. The boundary between leaders and those who are led tends to die away. At the same time, the human nature of pursuing freedom and equality as well as the courage of challenging authority and despising power continue to influence people’s behavior within the organization. Under this circumstance, issues pertaining employee power have caught the attention of the academia as well as the business world.However, as perceived by most people, power belongs to leaders. Leaders are the users and supervisors of power whereas employees are, and only are, the followers. The distribution of power between leaders and employees is, in fact, disproportionate. Whether employees get to come into play in the process of decision-making requires us to search for ways to not only involve employees from the perspective of the organization itself and its leaders, but more importantly, to analyze the situation from employees themselves. Therefore, we decide to focus on employee power and take it as the main topic of this research.To answer questions regarding the definition of employee power and its status quo, the demand for employee power and the impact that the recognition of employee power has on its behavior and how it happens, we first, based on the study of the fundamental elements of power, analyze the main contents of power. With the view of recognition, we then proceed to define the status quo of employee power, i.e., power distance, and the needs and meaning of employee power, i.e., power value, as employee power recognition. Finally, we study the patterns of the influence of employee power recognition on the behavior.Our research identifies the following topics:1. The contents of organizational power and the analysis of its attributesAlbeit the academia has systematically studied the bases and types of power, the research on how power is displayed, i.e., what the fundamental elements of power are, does not delve deeper within organizations. We base our dissertation on the elements of power; with empirical methods, we have identified six types of organizational power—personnel decision power, superior support power, institution decision power, relationship influence power, capacity decision power, and analyzed four attributes of power—differences of power distribution, variability of power belonging, expediency of power use, and value of power demand.2. Research on employee power recognitionUsing power distance and power value as frameworks, we classify organizational power and then analyze employee power recognition through the view of recognition. We found that employee power recognition contains the recognition of employee power value and employee power distance. By employee power value recognition, we considered position power value, organizational power value and relationship influence value; while we define employee power distance recognition as position power distance, organizational power distance, relationship influence power distance and capacity power distance.The research on the structure and model of employee power recognition laid vital foundation for further study on the patterns of employee power recognition.3. Research on employee behaviors and leadership behaviors towards employee power recognitionThere are countless studies on employee behavior (performance) and leadership behavior (style). However, whether employee power recognition has an impact on its behavior, whether the behavior is positive or negative and what the take leadership behavior is during the process, are not yet to be identified. We use polar approaches—democratic and autocratic leadership behaviors, and proactive and passive employee behaviors in this dissertation. We found that proactive employee behaviors include innovation, advocation, and citizenship; while passive behaviors include negletion, silence, and antagonism. Also, democratic leadership behaviors include empowerment and influence; whereas autocratic behaviors include admonition and punishment.The analysis of the structure of leadership and employee behavior laid the cornerstone for further research on employee power recognition and the relationship between leadership and employee behavior.3. The relationship among employee power recognition, leadership behavior and employee behaviorStudies have shown that leadership behavior and/or style have essential influence on employee behavior. The conclusion of this dissertation indicated the relationship between democratic behaviors of leadership and proactive behaviors of employees, autocratic behaviors of leadership and passive behaviors of employees are statistically significant related; whereas democratic and passive behavior, autocratic and proactive behavior are not related. Besides, we corroborated that leadership empowerment and employee innovation, advocation and citizenship behaviors, leadership influence and employee innovation, advocation and citizenship behaviors, leadership admonition and employee negletion, silence and antagonism behaviors, leadership punishment and employee negletion, silence and antagonism behaviors are all statistically significant related. When studying the relationship between employee power recognition and employee behavior, we found that democratic behavior of leadership serves as a mediator in the relationship between employee power distance recognition and proactive behavior, as well as employee power value recognition and its proactive behavior. Moreover, autocratic behavior of leadership serves as a mediator in the relationship between employee power distance recognition and its passive behavior; however, it does not serve as a mediator between the relationship between employee power value recognition and passive behavior. By delving deeper on the advantages and disadvantages of the preceding conclusion, we, by using PA-LV model and its structural equation, try to further analyze the influence path, and preliminarily found that employee power distance recognition has an influence on its proactive behaviors through democratic behaviors of leadership, and on its passive behaviors through autocratic behaviors of leadership. Also, employee power value recognition affects its proactive behaviors through democratic behaviors of leadership.This research helps elevate employee’s consciousness of power and finds new management methods pertaining to the effective use of employee power. Moreover, the results and follow-up research on employee power and its influence patterns laid foundation for future studies and development of theories of employee power management.