A Study Of The Mechanism Of The Congruence Of Leader-Follower Power Distance Orientation On Employees' Behavior

Power distance is defined as the degree of unequal distribution of power that a society or organization can afford.Since Hofstede discussed the concept of power distance proposed by Mulder at the national level in the 1980 s,the discussion in the academic field has never stopped.Nowadays,the changes of social power structure are brought by the development of the Internet and the millennial generation with high individual power cognition have entered the workplace,which make power distribution and status cognition between the leader and follower of organizations display historical characteristics different from ever.However,from the perspective of existing researches,although previous researches have made many breakthroughs and laid a good foundation for the study of power distance in the organizational context,the existing researches still have the following limitations:First,although the current research on the main effects of power distance has covered the levels of countries,organizations,teams and individuals,only research at the national level is more in-depth,the influence of the organization,team and individual level is limited,especially the relationship between the individual power distance orientation and individual output remains to be further explored.Secondly,current discussion on the mediating mechanism of power distance and its influence effect at all levels are extremely limited.The research at the organizational level mainly focuses on the relevant work variables,while the discussion at the individual level mostly focuses on the psychological level.Other variables are not given enough attention,especially the lack of relevant research on the mechanism of power distance on the individual behavior of employees.Thirdly,although there are many discussions about power distance as a moderator at present and the conclusions are relatively consistent,the research on the moderating mechanism of the main effects of power distance is very limited,leaving a great space for discussion.Finally,past studies of individual-level power distance orientation mostly treat leaders and subordinates as independent individuals.It is still not systematic enough to discuss the impact of the congruence of the leader and follower power distance orientation and the mechanism.Based on the above limitations,this study will conduct a cross-level polynomial regression on the basis of duality relationship between leaders and followers,and explore the influence mechanism and results of the congruence of leaders and followers' power distance orientation on individual behavior.Based on previous research,this study has explicit the mechanism of leader and subordinate power distance orientation under different matching modes,and supplements the above limitations through empirical research,thereby further enriching and expanding the study of the theory of the power distance orientation on individual level.This will make enterprise managers have a better understanding of the relationship between supervisors and subordinates under the new situation,and provide theoretical guidance for the practice of enterprise management and management implications.Specifically,Study 1 explores the congruence effect of leader and follower power distance orientation on work engagement and the mediating role of leadership identity through the survey of 308 matching samples from the perspective of social identity theory.Study 2 explores the congruence effect of leader and follower power distance orientation on employees' speaking up behaviors and the moderating effect of different self-construction types of employees through the survey of 296 matching samples from the perspective of planned behavior theory.Through the investigation of 296 matching samples,Study 3 discusses the congruence effect of leader and follower power distance orientation on employees' taking change behavior from the perspective of implicit theory,as well as the mediating role of trustable leaders and the moderating effect of different self-regulation types of employees.The conclusions of this study will make great contributions to many fields,such as power distance orientation,work engagement,speaking up and taking-change behaviors.Firstly,starting from the essence of the dual duality relationship between leader and subordinate,this study has comprehensively considered the influence result and effect of leader-subordinate power distance orientation congruence,so as to transform one-way values into two-way values matching.Secondly,this study constructs the direct connection between cognition and behavior,and examines the congruence influence of the leader-follower power distance orientation behavioral variables,such as work engagement,speaking up and taking change behavior,thus examining the near-end effects and direct results of consistency effects.Thirdly,this study reveals the black box mechanism between individual power-distance orientation congruence and individual employee behavior,discusses the mediating role of leadership identity and trust in supervisors which enriches the cognitive path of individual behavior from power distance orientation congruence.Finally,the employee self-construction type and self-regulation type are included in different models,thus perfecting the boundary of the research on the main effect of the congruence of the leader and follower power distance orientation.Moreover,from the perspective of practical implications,this study can help managers to reduce various problems caused by the cognitive deviation of power distance between superiors and subordinates in the organization,which increases the execution ability of organizational management,and provides corresponding theoretical guidance and management enlightenment for the management practice of and new generation of talents in organization.