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Servant leadership is a new follower-centric style of leadership. The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of the project leaders’ servant leadership style on project team effectiveness via team goal clarity and team process clarity within the project-based organizational context.

A total of 58 teams working in 3 project-based organizations participated in the survey study. Team members rated their project leaders’ servant leadership style, team goal clarity and team process clarity in the project, while leaders evaluated team effectiveness. Hypotheses were tested using multi-level structural equation modeling.

Results suggested that servant leadership had a positive and significant impact on project team effectiveness via team goal clarity and team process clarity.

The study examined the influence of servant leadership as a team leadership approach within a project context. As a multi-level design, the study also identified the team-specific mechanisms (team goal clarity and team process clarity), which could help accomplish team effectiveness.

Based on two dominant perspectives, team climate and knowledge integration, on team innovation, this study aims to propose a moderated mediation model to examine the interactive effect of inter-team trust and goal clarity on team innovation through knowledge inflows into a team. Considering the two perspectives at the same time will provide a more complete picture on our understanding on team innovation.

The research model is tested on 150 retail teams of a large apparel firm. Data are collected from two separate surveys, one to store managers and one to store staff members. Moderation mediation regression analysis is conducted on the survey data.

The regression analysis identified both a positive direct effect of goal clarity on innovation, and a negative moderating effect of goal clarity on the mediation of knowledge inflows between inter-team trust and innovation. In other words, inter-team trust is positively related to team innovation through knowledge inflows when goal clarity is low.

In this study, the authors identify an indirect and negative role of goal clarity on team innovation, and examine the mechanism and boundary of inter-team trust on team innovation. Managers are advised to foster a trusting environment and be aware of cognitive bias in their teams so that their teams can be more innovative.

Using the lens of conservation of resources (COR) theory, the purpose of this paper is to explore the effect of humble leadership on project success by integrating the mediating role of goal clarity. The authors also argue that organizational culture moderates these direct and indirect relationships through goal clarity.

Time-lagged data were collected from 329 employees in the civil construction sector of Pakistan.

The results indicate that humble leadership enhances project success through mediating and moderating mechanisms.

The present research ends with an argument, managerial consequences, limits and guidance for future research.

The results influence a project-based organization on the selection and promotion of humility among project managers.

This research answers the following research question, which has been ignored in the literature: What are the suggested mechanisms for humble leadership in promoting project success?

The purpose of this paper is to examine the mediating role of goal clarity in the relationship between leadership styles and project success. The paper draws on full-range leadership theory, and contextualizes leadership styles such as transformational leadership style, and transactional leadership style (active management by exception, and contingent reward) to temporary project environment.

Data are collected (in year 2017) from 248 individuals working in ten large project-based organizations from different sectors, each having multiple units in Pakistan. Respondents comprise functional managers and individuals (who have lead or worked on projects), as well as dedicated project managers.

Goal clarity partially mediates the relationship between transformational leadership style and project success. However, in case of the transactional leadership style, there is no mediation as transactional leadership style is not associated with goal clarity. Furthermore, contingent reward is positively associated to project success, while active management by exception is negatively associated to project success.

Research suggests that the underlying mechanisms of the relationship between leadership styles (transactional and transformational) and project success are less clear and need to be further explored. This study contributes to literature by answering such calls, and examines possible underlying mechanisms (i.e. goal clarity) in the relationship between leadership styles and project success.

As an increasingly important variable in the career field, career sustainability has received particular attention, yet few empirical studies have been conducted to examine its antecedents. The authors propose a moderated mediation model based on the goal-setting theory and the wise proactivity perspective for exploring when and how self-goal setting can influence career sustainability.

The authors use a time-lagged design and collect three waves of data from 1,260 teachers in basic education schools in China. The authors test the proposed hypotheses with SPSS 26.0 and Mplus 8.3.

The results show that self-goal setting positively relates to career sustainability and that career crafting plays a mediating role in this relationship. This relationship is strengthened when perceived organizational goal clarity is high.

The authors extend the application scenarios of the goal-setting theory to the field of career research and find out that self-goal setting is also a self-initiated and wise antecedent of career sustainability. From a wise proactivity perspective, the authors examine the mediating mechanism of career crafting to make positive career outcomes. Furthermore, the authors consider the impact of perceived organizational goal clarity as a boundary condition and broaden the understanding of “when to wise proactivity” from the goal-setting theory.

The study investigated the relationship between future time perspective and financial well-being among Chinese working millennials and its serial mediators, such as financial goal clarity, subjective financial knowledge and responsible financial behaviour, to foster consumer resilience in the financial realm.

A total of 526 Chinese working millennials (Mage = 31.78) participated in the online survey in response to questions on demographic characteristics and items to measure the variables adopted in the research model. Covariance-based structural equation modelling (CB-SEM) and AMOS version 27 were used to test the research hypotheses.

The results revealed a positive correlation between future time perspective and financial well-being. Moreover, the results showed that financial goal clarity, subjective financial knowledge and responsible financial behaviour serially mediated the correlation between future time perspective and financial well-being.

The findings provide implications for companies and policymakers to refine their intervention programmes to boost young millennials' future time perspectives in reinforcing their financial knowledge and financial goal clarity which in turn fosters their responsible financial behaviour in contributing to financial well-being in boosting their overall consumer resilience. Future studies should deepen the way in which the studied factors are leveraged as a tool to improve individuals' resilience in the economic realm.

The findings of this study shed light on the underlying mechanisms that drive and promote the financial well-being of Chinese working millennials.

Leading with vision while granting employees autonomy is one effective organizational response to the demands of a dynamic external environment. The former is thought to align followers' behavior by providing guidance, the latter to increase variance in their behavior by relinquishing control; both exert beneficial but distinct effects on organizational performance. What has remained uncharted heretofore is how these leader behaviors shape their followers' cognition and, subsequently, yield improvements in performance. The authors argue that a leader's vision communication transforms followers' cognitive representation of their work. This not only enables them to specify their goals in alignment with the vision (goal clarity) but also to locate the meaning of their work within the bigger picture of the vision (construal level). By contrast, perceived autonomy in terms of power-sharing might directly affect followers' work engagement more narrowly.

The authors tested the model on a sample of 408 employees from eleven enterprises of a holding company. In the survey, employees reported perceived vision communication and autonomy provided by their leader. Furthermore, the authors assessed the employees' goal attainment. To capture how employees represent their daily work activities, the authors measured their construal level and their goal clarity.

The results show that both perceived vision communication and granted autonomy improve employees' goal achievement. Moreover, two processes mediate the relationship between vision communication and goal achievement in followers: first, specifying goals in terms of clarity; second, composing a higher-level mental construal of their work. In contrast, no mediation of empowering leader behaviors was found.

Better goal achievement through visionary leadership is therefore achieved through cognitive alignment of followers, while leader-granted autonomy acts as a motivational tool directly on performance.

To complement previous research on team performance, the purpose of this paper is to analyze the development of team performance and top management approval at the team level. In the proposed model, team performance and top management approval are influenced by the team leader’s charisma, teamwork exhaustion, and goal clarity via the full mediation of team planning. The effects of the leader’s charisma and goal clarity on team planning are moderated by teamwork exhaustion.

Empirical testing of this model based on hierarchical regression modeling, by investigating team personnel in high-tech firms, confirms the applicability of team planning among these firms’ work teams.

A team leader’s charisma and goal clarity positively relate to team planning, while teamwork exhaustion is not associated with team planning. Team planning further positively relates to team performance and top management approval, respectively. A team leader’s charisma negatively moderates the relationship between teamwork exhaustion and team planning, while goal clarity positively moderates the relationship between teamwork exhaustion and team planning.

While previous literature has focused in depth on team planning and its antecedents and outcomes, there still exists an important gap regarding potential moderation in the formation of team planning. This study provides some important findings that complement previous literature by examining three fresh exogenous determinants for explaining team planning, their interaction effects, and how they indirectly relate to team performance and top management approval via the full mediation of team planning.

Numerous accounting studies have investigated the effects of participatory budgetary processes. The job satisfaction of participating employees is one of the most frequently researched issues. Increased employee participation in budgeting widens the responsibilities and experience of employees. However, it might also increase the level of task difficulty and reduce task clarity. The purpose of this study is to design an improved budgeting system for subordinates so as to enhance job satisfaction in a working environment of difficult task setting and low goal clarity.

The present paper employs two models (direct and indirect) to investigate the level of employee satisfaction during budgetary participation, focusing on the hotel industry in Macau.

The direct model suggests that task difficulty and clarity do not directly affect satisfaction levels among employees during budgetary participation. However, the indirect model suggests that, under conditions of increased task difficulty and unclear goal situations, the level of job satisfaction is mediated indirectly through the influence of four core dimensions (budget variety, autonomy, task identity, and feedback). The study thus finds that improved design of budgetary processes, taking account of four core dimensions (budget variety, autonomy, task identity, and feedback), produces greater job satisfaction among employees who are desirous of satisfying higher‐order needs. Moreover, these employees are rated by superiors as performing higher‐quality work during the budgetary process.

The paper contributes to the budgeting literature in several ways. It confirms the beneficial effect of improved budgetary design in enhancing employees' job satisfaction in a working environment of task difficulty and unclear goal setting, which is particularly important in the hotel industry and other service sectors. The paper also extends the literature that has hitherto typically focused on the examination of factors that affect the level of employees' job satisfaction, and recognizes the importance of budgetary design to job satisfaction.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the unique contributions from social (i.e. trust climate, departmental integration) and organisational factors (i.e. managerial recognition, goal clarity and technology support) to work engagement and identification with the organisation in a human resource offshoring (HRO) context.

Participants were recruited from a large Australian financial institution with an HR centre located in the Philippines. Ninety-one members of the captive HR centre completed the anonymous online questionnaire consisting of quantitative items and open-ended fields. Regression analyses were conducted to ascertain the relationships hypothesised.

The findings suggest that goal clarity is a key predictor of both engagement and identification with the organisation, and that technology support and managerial recognition also influence offshore staff members’ motivation and workplace attitudes.

The cross-sectional, self-report nature of the study, along with the small sample obtained, are noted as limitations of the study. Nevertheless, the high response rate (91 per cent) and availability of qualitative data provide valuable insight into the key factors that impact HRO operations and performance.

The study uncovers social and organisational variables that affect staff motivation and attitudes in an HRO context, and offers a number of guidelines for practitioners operating in these settings, focussing on goal clarity, managerial recognition and technology support.

The study contributes to a growing body of research into the organisational and human capital factors that account for HRO performance and sustainability, and offers preliminary evidence for their unique contributions to key performance drivers. Guidelines for future research and business practice are proposed, namely, the consideration of multilevel and temporal approaches to the management and investigation of HRO operations.