组织中的变革担当:积极组织行为研究的新主题

Taking Charge in Organizations:A New Topic of Positive Organizational Behavior Research

变革担当是指员工自愿付出建设性努力来发起组织功能性变革,以便在自己的岗位、部门或组织情境中更加有效地开展工作。文章介绍了变革担当的概念、测量以及前因后效。其中前因包括个体因素(如前瞻性人格、组织支持感、积极情绪等)和情境因素(如工作自主性、管理开放性、创新氛围等)两大类,后效主要有工作绩效评价、工作态度和变革型领导知觉等。未来的研究需要进一步完善测量工具、考察组织外部因素的影响、检验影响后效的其他调节因素以及探讨领导者的变革担当行为。

In recent years,change-oriented organizational citizenship behaviors(OCBs)have received a great deal of attention from scholars in the field of managerial psychology.There has been growing emphasis on extra-role behavior or employee behavior that goes beyond role expectations in the organizational behavior literature.Scholars have argued that this phenomenon is critical for organizational effectiveness because managers cannot fully anticipate the activities that they may desire or need employees to perform.Although these extra-role activities are important,they are not sufficient for ensuring the continued viability of an organization,and organizations also need employees who are willing to challenge the present state of operations to bring about constructive changes.Hence,in this study,we focus on a form of extra-role behavior that has been largely neglected,namely taking charge.Taking charge refers to voluntary and constructive efforts by individual employees to affect organizationally functional change with respect to how work is executed within the contexts of their jobs,work units,or organizations.This paper introduced taking charge’s definition,measurement,and relationships with relevant variables,and then summarized the antecedents and consequences of such behavior.Taking charge is conceptually distinct from these more traditional forms of extra-role behavior,such as OCB,models that have been advanced to explain those behaviors are inappropriate for explaining taking charge,and scholars suggest that it is motivated by factors that have not previously been studied in the context of these more traditional forms of extra-role behavior.Taking charge may be viewed as threatening by peers or supervisors.Thus,an employee who is trying to bring about improvement may actually incite disharmony and tension that will detract from performance.The factors that positively affect taking charge can be classified into two categories:(1)Individual-level factors,such as proactive personality,perceived organizational support and positive emotions;and(2)Contextual factors,such as job autonomy,management openness,and innovative climate.The consequences of taking charge that past research has examined include in-role performance evaluation,job satisfactory,affective commitment,and perception of transformational leadership.Finally,the paper recommends that future research should focus particularly on the following four aspects:(1)Improving the measurement of taking charge;(2)Examining the impact of factors outside the organizations(e.g.,environment dynamism and industry competition);(3)Investigating more contingencies that moderate the consequences of taking charge,and(4)exploring the issue of leader taking charge in Chinese organizational context.This study expands current understanding of extra-role behavior and suggests ways in which organizations can motivate employees to go beyond the boundaries of their jobs to bring about positive changes.Despite a growing body of work in this area,existing research has provided a limited view of extra-role behavior by neglecting activities aimed at changing the status quo.We provide insight into more challenging,risky and effortful forms of discretionary employee behavior.It thereby broadens current conceptualizations of extra-role behaviors within organizations,going beyond the more mundane cooperative and helping behaviors that have been the focus of the existing research.