个人权力感对进谏行为的影响机制：权力认知的视角

The Mechanism of Employee's Sense of Power on Speaking-up:A Power Cognition Perspective

基于权力的情境聚焦理论,研究从权力认知的视角探讨了在中国背景下,政府组织中员工个人权力感知与他/她对上级的进谏行为的关系及其作用机制和边界条件。通过对苏南等地区政府组织的306名机关工作人员及其直接上级配对成组取样,采用层级回归等数据分析方法。研究结果发现,员工的个人权力感知与其进谏行为之间成正相关,并且这种关系是以认知灵活性和心理可得性为中介起作用的。个人权力感知与中介变量之间的关系又受到员工的权力距离倾向的正向调节影响,即权力距离倾向越大,这种正向关系越强。文章还讨论了所得结果的意义及未来研究。

Employee’ speaking-up behavior is a kind of voice behavior which points to a supervisor. Voice behavior is a form of constructive, change-oriented communication intended to improve the organization. Owing to the influence of Chinese culture and thinking style of Chinese people, although there are numerous research outcomes in western countries, it is hard to put these conclusions into practice in a Chinese background. Since governmental organization is representative of Chinese condition and culture, our study was conducted with samples taken from Chinese civil servants. Moreover, the psychological mechanism of speaking-up behavior was also investigated. The results have significant theoretical implications for speaking-up research, and are beneficial to the practice of recruitment and management of civil servants. Based on the situated focus theory and the approach/inhibition theory of power, the study was conducted to explore the relationship between employee’s sense of power and speaking-up behavior, as well as the inner cognitive mechanisms which are represented by cognitive flexibility and psychological availability. Furthermore, the moderating effect of employee’s power distance orientation was also investigated. Our sample consists of 306 civil servants and their immediate supervisors from governmental organizations in the southern area of Jiangsu province. To test our hypotheses, we used factor analysis, regression analysis and simple slope analysis. The results showed that, when employee’s sense of power was high, the probability of speaking-up behavior was increased, and this relationship was mediated by cognitive flexibility and psychological availability. Power distance orientation acted as a mediated-moderator which moderated the relationship between the sense of power and the speaking-up behavior. In addition, power distance orientation positively moderated the relationship between the sense of power and the two mediating variables. In other words, the main effect would be stronger when the moderator was high. Implications, limitations and future directions of the study were discussed as well.