冲突处理视角下服务型领导对员工工作沉浸的影响机制:服务型领导差异化的调节作用

The Influence Mechanism of Servant Leadership on Employees’Work-related Flow from the Perspective of Conflict Management:The Moderating Role of Differentiated Servant Leadership

基于社会认同理论,文章探讨服务型领导对员工工作沉浸的影响,并从冲突处理视角出发,揭示团队合作型冲突处理方式在该影响过程中扮演的中介角色;同时,在概念化服务型领导差异化的基础上,考察其在服务型领导与团队合作型冲突处理方式之间的调节作用。通过跨时点调研的方式,收集到来自68个工作团队的273份员工问卷用以检验假设。实证分析结果表明:(1)服务型领导正向影响员工工作沉浸;(2)服务型领导正向影响团队合作型冲突处理方式;(3)团队合作型冲突处理方式正向影响员工工作沉浸;(4)团队合作型冲突处理方式在服务型领导与员工工作沉浸之间具有显著中介作用;(5)服务型领导差异化负向调节服务型领导对团队合作型冲突处理方式的影响。

In recent years,the people-oriented management thought has been widely popularized.Therefore,in order to establish an advantage with the human resources as core in the business competition,many enterprises begin to pay increasingly attention to finding a reliable man-agement method that can make employees and enterprises achieve win-win.Correspondingly,work-related flow,one of the pivotal concepts in positive psychology field,not only symbolizes the happy work experience of employees,but also helps to improve employees’work per-formance,which meets enterprises’abovementioned demands for management practice method to a certain extent.Against this background,exploring how to effectively promote employees’work-related flow has become a hot topic in the management academia.Inspired by the mainstream logics of strengthening work resource support and giving em-ployees more self-determination from the antecedent studies about employees’work-related flow,we take servant leadership which emphasizes putting the interests of subor-dinates first as the main explanatory variable of employees’work-related flow in this paper.Meanwhile,we use the social identity theory with both conceptual suitability and logical expansion to support our overall theoretical model’s construction and demonstra-tion.Then,based on the perspective of conflict management that closely related to the social identity theory,this paper reveals the mediating role of cooperative team conflict management in the process of servant leadership affecting employees’work-related flow.Moreover,from the perspective of leadership resources and difference order(supervisor-subordinate guanxi),we conceptualize dif-ferentiated servant leadership and examines its moderating effect on the relationship between servant leadership and cooperative team conflict management.Through a two-wave time-lagged survey design,the questionnaires completed by 273 full-time employees in 68 work teams are col-lected to support the hypothesis test.Using Mplus7.0 and multi-level structural equation model(MSEM)for analysis,we get the fol-lowing results.(1)Servant leadership has a significantly positive impact on employees’work-related flow.(2)Servant leadership has a significantly positive impact on team cooperation conflict management.(3)Cooperative team conflict management positively affects employees’work-related flow.(4)Cooperative team conflict management plays a significantly intermediary role between servant leadership and employee work-related flow.(5)Service leadership differentiation negatively regulates the impact of servant leadership on cooperative team conflict management.This paper contributes to the existing literature in the following several aspects.Firstly,by showing the influence of servant leader-ship on employees’work-related flow,this paper en-riches the bottom-up leadership in the antecedent network of employees’work-re-lated flow.Secondly,through the integration of social identity theory and conflict management,this paper reveals the mediating role of cooperative team conflict management between servant leadership and employees’work-related flow.It not only expands the formation mechanism of employees’work-related flow,but also gives a good response to the research call of exploring the team-level mediating variables between leadership and employees’state.Thirdly,by conceptualizing the differentiated servant leadership,this paper responds to the academic call for expanding the research of differentiated team leadership,and develops the servant leadership theory from the perspective of individuals’differentiation in work team.Finally,by examining the moderating role of differentiated servant leadership between servant leadership and cooperative team conflict management,this paper expands the boundary condi-tions for the aftereffect of servant leadership from an endogenous view.The conclusions in this paper can provide the following implications for management practice.Firstly,by verifying the positive role of servant leadership in promoting employees’work-related flow and cooperative team conflict management,it suggests that enterprises should strengthen the cultivation of servant leadership in many modules of organization management.Secondly,by revealing the me-diating role of cooperative team conflict man-agement in the formation of employees’work-related flow,it suggests managers focus on guiding the work team to deal with the conflict in a cooperative way,thereby providing a supportive environment for employees to achieve work-related flow.Thirdly,by clarifying the negative moderating role of differentiated servant leadership in the process of servant leadership affecting cooperative team conflict management,it suggests enterprises emphasize the im-portance of equal treat-ment in improving management efficiency when cultivating servant leaders.