挑战性压力源与员工创新行为:领导-成员交换与辱虐管理的作用

When challenge stressors increase employee innovative behaviors? The role of leader member exchange and abusive supervision

基于工作要求-资源模型,探讨挑战性压力源在什么情况下能够促进创新。将领导-成员交换与辱虐管理作为工作资源,辱虐管理作为影响领导-成员交换是否可以被视为工作资源的情境因素,挑战性压力源作为工作要求,检验了领导-成员交换、辱虐管理对挑战性压力源与员工创新行为关系的三维调节作用。基于两个领导-下属配对样本的分析结果表明:挑战性压力源、领导-成员交换和辱虐管理对员工创新行为有显著三维交互作用,即领导-成员交换水平高、辱虐管理水平低时,挑战性压力源与员工创新行为正相关,在其他条件下,挑战性压力源与创新行为不相关或者负相关。本研究验证了工作要求-资源模型在解释挑战性压力源与创新行为之间关系的有效性,说明资源在挑战性压力源激发员工创新行为中扮演重要角色。

Innovation is often sparked by pressures. Researchers have made a great effort to investigate the relationship between workplace stressors and employee innovative behaviors. Yet, extant literature has not drawn consistent conclusions.Cavanaugh, Boswell, Roehling and Boudreau（2000） introduced the challenge-hindrance stressor framework. In this framework, challenge stressors are good demands that provide opportunities to learn and achieve, while hindrance stressors are bad demands that unnecessarily thwart personal achievements. Empirical evidence has consistently found that hindrance stressors are negatively related to employee innovative behaviors. However, the findings about the relationship between challenge stressors and innovative behaviors are mixed. Our study enlarges the previous findings and incorporates job resources from the leader, into the relationship between challenge stressors and innovative behaviors. Job demand-resources model indicates that when job resources can help employees meet the job demands, employees will embrace more positive work-related outcomes. High job resources can decrease employees＇ resource depletion when they face job demands, increase the motivational functions of job demands, and thus enable employees to successfully accomplish job demands. As a type of job resources, leader-member exchange can alleviate resources depletion. When leader-member exchange is high, employees are able to allocate more resources to cope with challenging demands. Due to the increase of successful coping, challenge stressors can lead to more positive woke-related outcomes, especially employee innovative behaviors. Thus when LMX is high, the relationship between challenge stressors and employee innovative behaviors is more positive than when LMX is low. Moreover, the style of leadership behaviors may influence the suitability of the resources provided by leaders to employees. Our study further argues that abusive supervision, as a type of negative style of leadership behaviors, is more likely to influence the moderating effects of LMX. When abusive supervision is high, leaders convey ＂mixed information＂ to employees with high LMX. Thus LMX cannot be used as resources to cope with job demands, or challenge stressors. In contrast, when abusive supervision is low, leaders convey ＂consistent information＂ to employees with high LMX. We collected two samples to test our hypotheses. For the first sample, the survey was administered in an energy drinks corporation located in China＇s Beijing municipal. We collected the data at two time spots with a temporal interval of 2 weeks and the final sample was composed of 195 matched leader-employee dyads. For the second sample, the survey was administered in four companies. We collected the data at one time spot and the final sample was composed of 251 matched leader-employee dyads. The results consistently revealed that the interaction of LMX and abusive supervision significantly moderated the challenge stressors – employee innovative behaviors link. Especially, only when LMX is high and abusive supervision is low, the relationship between challenge stressors and innovative behaviors is significantly positive. Theoretically, our study contributes to the relationship between challenge stressors and employee innovative behaviors using job demands-resources model. Further, our study also contributes to the leadership literature that the positive role of LMX can be influenced by the leadership behaviors, especially in our study, abusive supervision. Last, our study enlarges the innovation studies that the interplay of work stressors and work resources is essential for employee innovation. Practically, our study contributes to employee innovation improvements. Finally, the limitations and future research directions were discussed.