管家行为研究:回顾与展望

Stewardship Behavior: Review and Prospect

管家行为对于组织的生存与持续发展具有十分重要的价值,已成为组织管理研究学者关注的重要议题。管家行为是个体为了保护集体或组织的长期利益而愿意牺牲其个人短期利益的行为表现。文章在介绍概念及测量的基础上,综述了心理、结构、领导、情境和文化等个体/组织层因素对管家行为的预测与作用机制,以及管家行为对雇员创造力和企业绩效的影响。未来研究可探讨管家行为的消极后果变量,以及管家行为与后果变量之间的中介机制和调节机制。

As one of the key prosocial behaviors in the workplace, stewardship behavior is an important subject in the field of organizational behavior and human resource management study. Stewardship behavior refers to the extent to which an individual willingly subjugates his or her personal interests to act in protection of organization’s long-term welfare. This article reviews all the related literatures on stewardship behavior from the following perspectives： concept development, antecedents, outcomes, mediators, and a summary of study prospects. Stewardship behavior is theoretically and conceptually distinct from altruism and organizational citizenship behaviors（OCBs）. Altruism is a motivational state with the ultimate goal of increasing another person’s welfare. Such self-sacrificial behavior, however, does not necessarily consider collective well-being. In contrast, stewardship behaviors serve the interests of multiple individuals; self-sacrificial behaviors are aimed at benefiting collective interests. OCBs are discretionary behaviors that are ＂not directly or explicitly recognized by the formal reward system and that in the aggregate promote the effective functioning of the organization＂. Although OCBs include activities that target other individuals in the workplace and the organization itself, OCBs do not necessarily aim to ensure such a long-term effect. On the contrary, stewardship behaviors necessarily arise from a consideration of the long-term consequences on others’ welfare. The article generalizes five categories influencing factors at both the individual and the organizational levels： psychology, structural factors, leadership behavior, organizational situation and cultures. The five categories factors influence people’s stewardship behavior for different reasons. Also, two effects are summed up： the impact on employee creativity and organizational performance. According to the relationship chain of structurepsychology-behavior, this paper proposes a cross-level model of stewardship behavior through the integration of the above variables. This model assumes that organizational factors（i.e., structural factors）, that stimulate the cognitive motivational processes（i.e., other-regarding perspective and long-term orientation） and the emotional motivational processes（i.e., affective commitment）, are the key psychological mechanism underlying stewardship behavior which, in turn, influences individual and organizational consequences（i.e., employee creativity, organizational performance）. Future studies can expand the study of stewardship behavior in the following ways. First, Chinese scholars can examine the organizational-level mediators in the relationship between organizational factors and stewardship behavior. The reason is that according to the organizational climate theory and the social information processing theory, the variables such as an organizational empowering climate and an organizational climate in which the employees feel that the organization does care for them may play a mediating role in those relationship. Second, based on the social cognitive theory, self-efficacy may play a mediating role between stewardship behavior and employee creativity, therefore we can further explore the mediating mechanisms of the relationship between stewardship behavior and consequence variables such as employee creativity. Third, the moderator variables（e.g., traditionality and the Zhong-Yong [the Golden Mean] thinking style） affecting the relationship between stewardship behavior and outcome variables in the Chinese management context also need to be considered. Finally, according to the conservation of resources theory, when employees were asked to demonstrate a much more positive organizational behavior than the call of their organizational duty, the individuals may experience fatigue. Therefore, we can further explore the possible negative consequences caused by the stewardship behavior.