下属如何评价上司的领导行为——社会竞争和关系规范理论的视角

How Does Subordinate Evaluate His Supervisor's Leadership Behavior?——Perspectives based on Social Competition and Relational Norm Theories

本文整合了中国高权力文化背景下关系人口统计学相关理论的不同作用。采用来自65家企业和307个团队的1844对和1918对上下级配对数据,发现与上级有相似的人口统计学特征的下属对上级领导行为的评分低于与上级差异的下属。而人口统计学特征符合上下级关系规范的下属对上级领导行为的评分高于那些关系人口统计学特征不符合关系规范的下属。进一步地,将高承诺工作系统作为一个低权力差距文化,支持了本文结论的稳健性。本文研究对在中国文化背景下关系人口统计学的研究具有重要意义。

Workplace is becoming more and more diverse in China now. This tendency would have profound impact on the behaviors and attitudes in both team level and individual level. Compared to team level diversity, there are few relational demography researches in China. Demographic features were long regarded as important variables in psychological research （Zedeck ＆ Cascio, 1984）. They included both surface-level variables such as age, gender or education level and deep-level variables such as personality, beliefs or cognition （Harrison, Price ＆ Bell, 1998 ）. Relational demography ,an individual level construct different from compositional and distributive demography （Pfeffer, 1983 ;Jackson et al. ,, 1991 ）, refers to the comparative demographic characteristics （both surface-level and deep-level） of supervisor-subordinate dyads or member-teammates （Tsui ＆ O＇ Reilly, 1989 ）. In this article, we focused on surface-level demographic similarities and dissimilarities in supervisor-subordinate dyads. The insight of relational demography in supervisor-subordinate dyads is that the comparative demographic features （similarities and dissimilarities） can reflect deep level psycho- logical features or relational norms, and then influence organizational members＇ behaviors and attitudes. It had be- come an important topic in organizational behavior field. It is no doubt that these papers contributed to the develop- ment of relational demography in measurements, theories and empirical studies. However,just as the statement of Baker ＆ MaCann （2014）, the existing literature ＂had not analyzed the full potential of both demographic differences and similarities in vertical dyadic relationships （ P2 ）. ＂ There are still a few aspects that need to be explored：First, Relational demography was long criticized by researchers by its contra- dictory findings. Although considerable empirical studies had supported the positive effect of demographic similari- ties in vertical dyads on organizational members＇ attitudes and behaviors, some scholars had also found different re- suits. For example, Farh et al. （1998） found that the positive effect was not supported with Chinese samples in both vertical and horizontal dimensions. Pelled ＆ Xin （2000） found that age similarity in vertical dyads was negatively rather than positively associated with members＇ performance in Mexico. Second, theory foundations of relational de- mography are complex, and even controversial. To illustrate, the prediction of similarity-attraction paradigm and self- category theory to supervisor-subordinate demographic similarities are in opposite to that of social competition theo- ry. The relational norm theory is a competing theory of self-category theory in explaining the effect of supervisor-sub- ordinate dissimilarities. However, there is no existing paper that can integrate the different theories and point out the boundary of them. Third, some scholars had found that the effect of relational demography in China was different from that in the U. S where the effect of relational demography had been proven to be well established by enormous empirical studies. For example, Farh et al. （1998） asserted that ＂there may be different base for similarity-attraction and social identification in Western and Eastern context＂. Tsui, Wang ＆ Xin （2006） found that relational demo- graphic similarity would be less useful in non-western settings than in western contexts. Unfortunately, we still do not know exactly why they are different and the underlying mechanism. It is really a big gap in existing literatures that is important and needs to be explored. Based on these gaps, in this study, we integrated the existing theoretical foundations of the effects of both rela- tional demographic similarities and dissimilarities in a high power distance context in China. We proposed that hier- archy positions became the most salient dimension for categorization due to high power distance. Accordingly, the effects of other demographic features are limited. As thus, the effect of self-category theory was attenuated. However, because of the emphasis on social norms especially demographic norm, the effects of social competition and relation- al norm theory which are not relevant in western countries are amplified. It led to that subordinates with similar de- mographic features with their supervisor rated the supervisor＇ s leadership behavior lower than those with different demographic features. It also resulted in that subordinates whose demographic features consistent with relational norms rated the supervisor higher than those inconsistent with relational norms. Using data from 65 firms ,307 work teams and 2307 dyadic data, we confirmed the robustness of our conclusion. This paper contributed to the development of relational demography research in China by integrating the existing theories and pointed out which mechanism counted in China.