ISSN 0439-755X
CN 11-1911/B
主办:中国心理学会
   中国科学院心理研究所
出版:科学出版社

心理学报 ›› 2014, Vol. 46 ›› Issue (2): 252-264.doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2014.00252

• 论文 • 上一篇    下一篇

道德领导与员工建言:一个调节-中介模型的构建与检验

梁建   

  1. 上海交通大学安泰经济与管理学院, 上海 200052
  • 收稿日期:2013-01-12 发布日期:2014-02-25 出版日期:2014-02-25
  • 通讯作者: 梁建
  • 基金资助:

    国家自然科学基金项目(70902046和71222201)资助。

Ethical Leadership and Employee Voice: Examining a Moderated-Mediation Model

LIANG Jian   

  1. Antai College of Economics and Management, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200052, China
  • Received:2013-01-12 Online:2014-02-25 Published:2014-02-25
  • Contact: LIANG Jian

摘要:

近年来, 研究者就如何激发员工公开讲出自己的观点、意见和问题进行了大量的探索。其中, 道德领导对员工建言的效应受到了越来越多研究的关注。在以往研究的基础上, 本研究构建了一个调节—中介模型以探讨道德领导影响员工建言的中介心理机制及其边界条件。根据社会交换理论和社会信息加工理论, 本文分别提出两种不同的中介变量—— 责任知觉和心理安全感—— 来解释道德领导与员工建言之间的关系。在此基础上, 本研究进一步假设权力距离会正向调节变量之间的间接关系。通过对某一零售企业239名员工的两阶段调查, 我们对以上研究假设进行了检验, 结果总体上支持了本研究的理论预期。本研究的发现有利于我们了解道德领导影响建言行为的心理机制, 指导管理者采取有针对性的措施, 以期有效地管理企业中的员工建言行为。

关键词: 道德领导, 建言行为, 责任知觉, 心理安全感, 权力距离

Abstract:

Employee voice received more and more research attention recent years. Among this line of research, ethical leadership was proposed to be a key variable to motivate employee voice. The purpose of the present study is to examine the relationship between ethical leadership and employee voice. Drawing on the characteristics of employee voice and relevant theories about ethical leadership (i.e., social learning theory, Bandura, 1977; social exchange theory, Blau, 1964), we propose two psychological mediators to clarify the underlying mechanisms of ethical leadership on employee voice: psychological safety and felt obligations. Furthermore, we propose power distance orientation as a boundary variable to understand its interplay with ethical leadership on psychological mediators. Power distance orientation is expected to influence individuals’ sensitivity to the ethical signal of leadership. It helps to illustrate different psychological processes that better explain the mediating model of ethical leadership. A two-phase survey data were collected from 239 Chinese retailing employees. I administered two versions of surveys at two different time points. In the first survey, the focal employee was asked to provide information about ethical leadership, felt obligations, psychological safety, and power distance orientation. Six weeks later, the immediate manager was asked to assess the focal employee’s voice behavior. All the scales were well-established in the literature. The standard translation and back-translation procedures were employed to translate the English items into Chinese by the researcher. Structural equation modeling technique was employed to test the hypotheses about mediation and moderation, while bootstrap analysis procedures were used to test the moderated-mediation relationships among the study variables. Consistent with predictions, the results showed that both psychological safety and felt obligations mediated the influence of ethical leadership on voice behavior. Meanwhile, the results suggest that power distance orientation not only positively moderated the relationship between ethical leadership and two mediators (i.e., psychological safety and felt obligations): the relationship between ethical leadership and two psychological mediators was much stronger for high power distance employees than for the ones with low power distance orientation. Since both significant mediation and moderation relationships existed, I further examined the possibility of a mediated moderation relationship. The results suggest that two indirect relationships (i.e., ethical leadership-felt obligations-promotive voice and ethical leadership-psychological safety-prohibitive voice) were positively moderated by power distance orientation. Collectively, this research extends our understanding of the leadership-voice relationship and specifies how ethical leaders facilitate employee voice. Our study showed that ethical conducts from the power-holders would be important for motivating employee constructive voice, because the ethical type of leadership actively create two necessary conditions for voice behavior: felt obligations and psychological safety. Therefore, the full integration of ethical standards into leadership is not only preferable, but also necessary for long-term organizational innovation and survival. In addition, managers should play a critical role in advancing moral principles, setting moral examples and emphasizing moral persuasion in the Chinese context, where there is likely to be a much heavier concentration of individuals with a high power distance orientation than other places with low power distance tradition (i.e., the U.S.). Otherwise, employees’ unrest may be easily fuelled by suspicious of abuse of power and official corruption in the management side during the period of restructuring.

Key words: ethical leadership, employee voice, psychological safety, felt obligations, power distance orientation