“新员工悖论困境”破解:双元领导动态协同过程及化解路径研究

Breaking through the Paradox Dilemma of Newcomers:Research of the Synergetic Process of Ambidextrous Leadership on Newcomers’Socialization and Innovation

本文以创新型企业中17位组织领导者和配对的21位入职在一年以内的新员工为研究对象,应用事件系统理论(EST)和扎根理论分析方法(GT)识别出“新员工悖论困境”包括的五类关键典型特征:意义构建偏差、任务—关系冲突、创意沉浸偏差、情绪把控失调及角色认知矛盾,构建了一个涵盖37个子范畴和18个核心范畴的双元领导对新员工社会化适应与创新行为的内隐和整合协同过程模型。新员工在社会化适应过程中面临工作意义构建和任务—关系冲突协调的双重压力,双元领导通过认知传导路径和能力塑造路径,以内隐协同的方式推动新员工社会化;新员工在创新过程中面临创意沉浸偏差和情绪把控失调的双重压力,双元领导通过认知传导路径和情绪传导路径,以内隐协同的方式激发新员工创新行为;新员工在社会化适应与创新的整合过程中面临角色认知矛盾压力,双元领导通过角色整合路径以整合协同的方式,加快新员工对角色清晰认知和角色宽度自我效能感之间矛盾和张力的感知。同时,针对不同路径分析了双元领导对开放行为和闭合行为的动态协同过程,解构了双元领导如何进行协同增效的内部机理。

How could firms keep continuous innovation?Facing with the uncertain dynamic environment,organizations often regard recruiting new employees as an important way to stimulate innovation and maintain long-term competitiveness.On the one hand,new employees bring new ideas and vitality to the organization;on the other hand,they are facing with potential task conflict,relationship conflict and role conflict due to their immature understanding of roles.As new employees need to go through a social adaptation process from outsiders to insiders,whether they could exert their innovation ability needs certain supporting conditions.According to the theory of uncertainty reduction,strategies for new employees’social adaptation are a process of promoting new employees to reduce uncertainty,while the innovation strategy is the process of breaking through established rules and paradigms.From the perspective of process orientation,the two are opposite in directions,and are with tensions.It is difficult for new employees to promote their social adaptation strategy and innovation strategy simultaneously.Therefore,new employees are faced with dilemma between the social adaptation process and innovation process,which we call paradox dilemma of newcomers.In recent years,in order to cope with the growing demand for innovation and competition in organizations,paradox dilemma of newcomers has attracted more and more attention of organization leaders.The established working procedure and thinking logic could not meet the ultimate demands of continuous innovation.We need to bring new and vibrant elements in organizations,so as to update the old knowledge and practices in the organization,and stimulate the generation and integration of new knowledge;meanwhile,organizations need new employees to adapt to the specific organizational rules and regulations as soon as possible.Coping with the paradox dilemma of newcomers can provide a reference for new employees to switch flexibly between social adaptation and active innovation.Although a few studies have confirmed the paradoxical relationship between the social adaptation process and the innovation process,what the contradictions and tensions between the two processes are and how to solve the problem of coordination caused by the paradox dilemma of newcomers need to be studied.Nowadays,with the continuous emergence of organizational ambidexterity,the effectiveness of leadership in dealing with organizational contradictions and tensions has been widely concerned by scholars.Thus,this paper takes leadership as an important situational factor that affects employees’behavior to explore how leaders can ensure new employees’social adaptation and stimulate their innovative behavior.Facing the current highly dynamic and complex business environment,the former single leadership style often focused on the behavior solving mode in a single situation,which could not adapt to contradictions and tensions in the multi-situations.Therefore,ambidextrous leadership,which is a compound leadership style formed by the cross-integration of organizational duality and leadership,came into being.Adhering to the paradoxical thinking logic of both/and rather than either/or,ambidextrous leadership can switch opposing leadership behaviors flexibly according to different situations,so as to meet the different competitive needs of organizations and employees.It also provides an effective leadership tool for dealing with contradictions and tensions in organizations dynamically and cooperatively.Therefore,this paper applies 17 organizational leaders and 21 new employees who are employed within one year in innovative firms as the research subject,and uses the event system theory(EST)and grounded theory(GT)to identify five key typical characteristics of paradox dilemma for new-comers,namely,meaning construction bias,task-relationship conflict,creative immersion bias,emotional control imbalance and role cognition contradiction.This paper constructs an implicit and integrated collaborative process model of leading the synergy of new-comers’social adaptation and innovative behavior covering 37 sub-categories and 18 core categories.In the process of social adaptation,ambidextrous leaders promote the novelty reconstruction and“make-up”reconstruction of new-comers through cognitive transfer path,and promote task-based integrated construction and relationship-based integrated construction through ability shaping path.In the process of innovation,ambidextrous leaders promote new-comers to engage in knowledge creation and knowledge integration through the cognitive transfer path,and promote positive emotions and calm emotions through the emotion transfer path.In the integrated process,through the role integration path,ambidextrous leadership accelerates the perception of tensions between new-comers’role clarity and role breadth self-efficacy.Furthermore,according to different paths,the dynamic synergistic process of ambidextrous leadership on opening behavior and closing behavior is analyzed,and the internal mechanism of how ambidextrous leadership leads to synergy is deconstructed.