The Interactive Effect Of Leader Anger And Subordinate’s Attribution On Proactive Work Behavior

Since the global outbreak of COVID-19 in early 2020,business development and business routines have been greatly impacted by this pandemic.Telecommuting,digital campaign,sudden shutdown of production and international business are all new challenges for enterprises.It requires employees to have proactive work behavior under this new business environment,who is not limiting himself/herself to master the necessary knowledge and skills to complete normal working tasks,but also can proactively look into new areas and development capabilities that can help employer to overcome difficulties and implement business expansion in the increasingly complicated and volatile business market.Regarding proactiveness,the team leader plays an important role among all the factors that affect the proactive working behavior of the team members.Especially,the expression of anger from a leader is always the easiest factor that is aware by employees and affects their decisionmaking process.The previous researches generally support that leader’s anger emotion has a negative effect on subordinate behavior.But in recent years,many scholars had verified that leader’s anger also has a positive effect.Therefore,it is important to understand when the leader’s anger emotion triggers employee’s proactive work behavior,vice versa.Based on attribution theory,this research will focus on the interactive effect of leader anger and subordinate’s performance-promotion attribution on proactive work behavior,especially of the mechanism for the prompts and the inhibition,for us to better understand the advantages and disadvantages.Therefore,the study discusses the mediation role of affective rumination and problem-solving pondering between the interactive effect of leader anger and subordinate’s performance-promotion attribution and proactive work behavior.There’re 7hypotheses in this study.And we use SPSS and Mplus software to conduct the data analysis of 331 valid interview results.The result shows that:(1)The interactive effect of leader anger and subordinate’s performance-promotion attribution has a negative impact on affective rumination and positive effect on problem-solving pondering;(2)Affective rumination has a negative effect on proactive work behavior,while problem-solving pondering promotes proactive work behavior;(3)A mediation role of affective rumination and problem-solving pondering to employee’s proactive work behavior was observed under the interactive effect between leader anger and subordinate’s performance-promotion attribution.The contributions of this research are:(1)the attribution theory is used to explain the double-edged role of leadership anger for the first time;(2)A dual mediation model combines the affective pathway and cognitive pathway;(3)The application of work rumination in China’s workplace is enriched.The results of empirical research provide the reference for a company’s human resources management practice.The leader can better understand the importance of subordinate’s performance-promotion attribution,which inhibits the negative affective rumination and prompts employee’s rational thinking.It will help employees to work proactively to align with business goals,which will eventually enhance company’s core competence.