威权领导对团队建言氛围的影响机制研究

The Impact Mechanism of Authoritarian Leadership on Group Voice Climate

团队建言氛围会对员工及团队产生积极影响,虽然近年来越来越受到关注,但对其产生原因及形成机制的探讨却相对较少。西方学者认为,领导者在团队建言氛围形成过程中发挥着至关重要的作用。由于文化背景的不同,中国人的领导风格、思想观念及互动方式都与西方有所不同。本研究扎根中国文化情境,聚焦于威权领导这一体现中国传统文化深层次特质的领导方式,分析了威权领导对团队建言氛围影响的作用机制及边界条件。通过对58个团队的58位领导和435位员工的两阶段配对数据调研,研究发现,威权领导是通过破坏下属对领导的信任水平,从而抑制了团队建言氛围的形成,并且领导工作投入会调节下属对领导信任在威权领导与团队建言氛围关系中的中介作用。

Faced with the rapidly changing market environment today,the ability to mobilize the enthusiasm of employees and promote employee suggestions has become an important issue that concerns the survival and development of enterprises.Group voice climate refers to the common beliefs of team members on the impact of voice behaviors.Research on group voice climate is not only the logical continuation of the study of voice behavior,but also the deepening and refinement of the research on organizational climate.Prior literatures focused on the outcomes of group voice climate mainly and argued that group voice climate could bring positive impact to both staff and team.However,discussions on the causes and formation mechanism of this climate were relatively rare.As former researches have pointed out,group leaders have always been seen as a key factor in the formation of group climate,which definitely exert significant influence on group voice climate.Team leader is not only the main target who receives employee s voices,but also acts as“wind vane”reflecting the possible outcome of the voice.What does the leader emphasize,control and obedience or openness and inclusiveness,will inevitably affect the group climate of the voice by delivering important clues such as the possible consequences of the speech to the staff.Due to the distinct cultural background,the Chinese leadership style,attitudes and interactive ways are different from those in the west.This study is rooted in the context of Chinese culture,and focuses on the authoritarian leadership,which embodies the deep characteristics of Chinese traditional culture.Authoritarian leadership emphasizes that his authority is absolute and unchallengeable,makes strict control over subordinates and requires subordinates to obey without reservation.In this study,two core questions are raised and can be expressed as follows:what is the formative mechanism that can explain the relationship between authoritarian leadership and group voice climate,and what kind of factors can influence the whole process.According to social exchange theory and the principle of reciprocity,this paper explores the mechanism and boundary conditions of the influence of authoritarian leadership on group voice climate.We argue that subordinates trust in their leader acts as an important mechanism in understanding the relationship between authoritarian leadership and group voice climate.Authoritarian leaders can suppress the atmosphere of group voice by reducing the subordinates overall trust level.Besides,leader s work engagement moderates this whole mediating process.This research examines a moderated mediating process at the group level on a sample of 435 employees and their 58 leaders in 58 teams by collecting paired data in two times.Hierarchical regression analysis and Bootstrapping method are used in this paper.The results show that:(1)authoritarian leadership has a significant negative impact on group voice climate.(2)Subordinates trust in their leader mediates the relationship between authoritarian leadership and group voice climate.(3)Leader s work engagement moderated the relationship between authoritarian leadership and subordinate s trust in their leader,such that the negative relationship was more significant for leaders with high work engagement.(4)Leader s work engagement moderates the mediation role of subordinate s trust in their leader in the relationship between authoritarian leadership and group voice climate.This study examines the formative mechanism and situational elements of the group voice climate.The two main theoretical contributions of this research are as follows.First,the conclusion of the empirical study not only expands the research on the organizational climate,especially on the specific organizational climate,but also has reference significance for study on groups other specific climate,such as safety climate,service climate.Second,it helps us to understand more thoroughly the underlying restriction mechanisms behind the authoritarian leadership s impact on the climate of group voice,thus enriching the existing results of the formative elements of group voice climate.In addition,this study also has certain enlightenment significance to the management practice of enterprises.