| With the increasingly fierce market competition and the continuous change of the market circumstances,the centralized leadership no longer meets the needs of the rapid development of enterprises.So,the empowering leadership come into being and gets extensive attention from academia and industry.Empowering leadership advocates “letting employees participate in setting organizational goals and improving their self-management and leadership capability”.Early studies have shown that empowering leadership is a positive and effective way of leadership,which can increase employees’ commitment,intrinsic motivation,creativity and so on.However,the latest studies have shown that empowering leadership can also have negative effects on employees,such as increasing their work pressure,causing emotional exhaustion,reducing performance and so on.The reason is that previous studies mostly explored the effectiveness of empowering leadership from a single perspective of leaders or followers,but lack of inherent attention to the interaction between leaders and followers.Therefore,this dissertation takes both leaders and followers into consideration to explore the effectiveness of empowering leadership,that is,the followers’ preferred states(i.e.needed)and actual states(i.e.received)are included in the research at the same time.Besides,this dissertation takes “the fit between needed and received empowering leadership” as the starting point.Combined with literature review and practical work experience,this dissertation is based on person-environment fit theory,social exchange theory and leader-member exchange theory,and constructs a theoretical model of the impact of the fit between needed and received empowering leadership on followers’ upward voice behavior and taking charge at work from bilateral perspective.Accordingly,this dissertation discusses the mediating role of leader-member exchange.Besides,according to self-concept-based theory,this dissertation explores the moderating role of followers’ self-efficacy and relational identity.Specifically,this dissertation mainly includes the following six aspects: First,based on the person-environment fit theory,social exchange theory and leadermember exchange theory,and according to the supply-demand fit framework,the supply and demand level of empowering leadership is divided into four combinations: low-level fit,insufficient empowerment,high-level fit and excessive empowerment.This dissertation discusses the impact of the fit and misfit between needed and received empowering leadership on leader-member exchange.Second,this dissertation discusses the impact of the high and low level of the fit between needed and received empowering leadership on leader-member exchange respectively.Third,based on social exchange theory and leader-member exchange theory,this dissertation discusses the impact of subordinate’s perceived leadermember exchange on their upward voice behavior and taking charge at work respectively.Fourth,this dissertation discusses the mediating role of leader-member exchange between the fit between needed and received empowering leadership and followers’ upward voice behavior and taking charge at work respectively.Fifth,according to the self-concept-based theory,this dissertation discusses the moderating role of followers’ self-efficacy and relational identity between the fit between needed and received empowering leadership and leader-member exchange.Sixth,the moderated mediating effects are discussed.On the basis of systematic and comprehensive literature review of the fit between needed and received empowering leadership,leader-member exchange,upward voice behavior,taking charge at work,self-efficacy and relational identity,this dissertation determined the operational definition and scale for data collection of each variable.Specifically,this study commissioned a national professional data survey company to assist in data collection.Finally,50 team leaders and 253 followers from 38 manufacturing and service enterprises(each team includes 4-10members)were selected as the research participants.In order to verify the proposed model,this dissertation conducted a three multi-wave,multi-source surveys.Finally,241 subordinate questionnaires and 50 leadership questionnaires were obtained.We conducted multilevel polynomial regression and response surface modeling by using SPSS 24.0 and Mplus 8.3.According to the empirical results,this dissertation draws the following conclusions:(a)Compared with the misfit between needed and received empowering leadership,the degree of leader-member exchange is higher in the case of fitting;(b)The high-level fit between needed and received empowering leadership has a higher level of leader-member exchange than low-level fit in the case of fitting;(c)Leader-member exchange has a positive impact on followers’ upward voice behavior;(d)Leader-member exchange has a positive impact on followers’ taking charge at work;(e)The fit between needed and received empowering leadership affects the followers’ upward voice behavior through leadermember exchange;(f)The fit between needed and received empowering leadership affects the followers’ taking charge at work through leader-member exchange;(g)Self-efficacy moderates the positive relationship between the fit between needed and received empowering leadership and leader-member exchange.That is,in the case of fitting,when self-efficacy is higher,the positive relationship is stronger;(h)Relational identity moderates the positive relationship between the fit between needed and received empowering leadership and leader-member exchange.That is,in the case of fitting,when relational identity is higher,the positive relationship is stronger;(i)In the case of fitting,when the level of followers’ self-efficacy is higher,the positive impact of the fit between needed and received empowering leadership on subordinate’s upward voice behavior through leader-member exchange is stronger;(j)In the case of fitting,when the level of followers’ self-efficacy is higher,the positive impact of the fit between needed and received empowering leadership on subordinate’s taking charge at work through leader-member exchange is stronger.(l)In the case of fitting,when the level of followers’ relational identity is higher,the positive impact of the fit between needed and received empowering leadership on subordinate’s upward voice behavior through leader-member exchange is stronger;(m)In the case of fitting,when the level of followers’ relational identity is higher,the positive impact of the fit between needed and received empowering leadership on subordinate’s taking charge at work through leader-member exchange is stronger.The theoretical contributions and innovations of this dissertation are as follows:First,based on the bilateral perspective of leaders and followers,this dissertation discusses the impact of the fit between needed and received empowering leadership on followers’ upward voice behavior and taking charge at work respectively.Second,it modifies the conclusion of previous studies on the positive impact of empowering leadership on leader-member exchange,and breaks the cognition that positive leadership will always bring positive results.Third,this dissertation finds that the high-level fit of needed and received empowering leadership is easier to increase the leader-member exchange,so it comes to a new understanding that “high-level fit is better than low-level fit” of needed and received empowering leadership.Fourth,this dissertation systematically discusses how the fit between needed and received empowering leadership affects followers’ behavior,and clarifies the mediating mechanism of leader-member exchange between the fit between needed and received empowering leadership and followers’ upward voice behavior and taking charge at work.Fifth,drawing on the self-concept-based theory and personality traits,this dissertation examines the boundary conditions of the fit between needed and received empowering leadership.The practical significance of this dissertation includes the following aspects:First,managers should promote the fit between needed and received empowering leadership,they should have dynamic management awareness and contingency thinking,fully consider the needs,abilities and working environment of followers,so as to establish a high-level leader-member exchange.Second,managers should form a high-level fit of needed and received empowering leadership.At work,managers should not only provide corresponding empowerment according to the needs of followers,but also strive to improve the initiative of followers and develop their work potential,so as to enhance their needs of empowerment.Third,managers should cultivate followers’ spontaneous work motivation and make followers’ selfefficacy play a positive role.Managers can cultivate followers’ self-efficacy through oral persuasion,replacing role models and successful experience,so as to exert the positive effect of self-efficacy.Besides,the human resources department can hire followers with high self-efficacy in the recruitment process.Fourth,managers should hire employees with high relational identity,or train followers to enhance their relational identity.Managers should pay attention to the relationship with their followers,create communication opportunities and establish a good interactive relationship,so as to improve followers’ relational identity. |
