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Drawing on a costs-benefit analysis perspective, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between managerial openness and employee voice and its boundary conditions.

This study collected three waves of data by surveying 326 pairs of employees and their supervisors. The hypotheses were tested by using Hayes’s (2018) SPSS macro application with a bootstrap approach to obtain confidence intervals.

Managerial openness facilitates employee voice by decreasing perceived voice costs. Felt obligation positively moderates the direct as well as the indirect relationship between perceived voice costs and employee voice.

This study uncovers the alternative mechanism underlying the relationship between managerial openness and employee voice as well as the boundary condition of this relationship.

This study draws on uncertainty management theory to advance our understanding of the relationship between leader integrity and employee voice.

The authors collected data in China by surveying 274 supervisor-subordinate dyads at two different points in time. In addition to the direct relationship between leader integrity and employee voice, they also examined the moderating effect of leader consultation and the mediating effect of perceived risk of voice.

The authors found that leader integrity had a positive effect on employee voice, and perceived risk of voice mediated this relationship. They also found that leader consultation moderated the relationship between leader integrity and employee voice, as well as moderating the mediating role of perceived risk of voice.

Although prior research has examined the relationship between leadership and voice, it has not clearly explicated the effects of leader integrity on voice. In addition, the findings of this study regarding the moderating role of leader consultation, and the mediating role of perceived risk of voice, offer novel insights regarding the nature of the relationship between leader integrity and employee voice.

Although domestic research on Chinese management is emerging, a suitable domestic theory is still needed to support and explain Chinese management practice. Given that, this paper aims to extract ideas of cultivation from Confucianism and propose a theoretical framework of self-cultivation with a purpose to provide new explanations for domestic (nondomestic as well) management practice.

Drawing from pre-Qin cultivation discourse and management practice, this paper develops a theoretical framework of self-cultivation and discusses its implications.

This paper argues that self-cultivation emphasizes self-consciousness, initiative and selflessness. It also includes self-reflection, self-discipline, self-study and self-improvement, as well as self-dedication, all of which reflect the ideal realm of “self-cultivation.” This “realm” refers to the process of pursuing an ideal personality and high moral standards.

This paper contributes to the literature by identifying various potential applications of self-cultivation theory to domestic research on organizational behavior in China.

Integrating the pathway model of meaningful work and the intrinsic motivation principle of creativity, the authors investigate why, when and how paternalistic leadership relates to employee creativity in the Chinese organizational context. The authors suggest that the meaning of work (MOW) mediates the relationship between paternalistic leadership and employee creativity. The authors further identify perspective taking as a moderator in the mediated relationship for the path from MOW to creativity.

The authors relied on a sample of 340 employee-supervisor dyads collected from multiple organizations located in Eastern China to test the study hypotheses.

Results indicated that MOW mediated the positive relationships between the benevolence and morality dimensions of paternalistic leadership and employee creativity, and the negative relationship between the authoritarianism dimension of paternalistic leadership and employee creativity. Further, the indirect relationships between the three dimensions of paternalistic leadership (i.e. authoritarianism, benevolence and morality) and employee creativity through MOW were more pronounced when perspective taking was higher rather than lower.

Through a meaning-based perspective, the authors demonstrate that a culture-specific managerial philosophy (i.e. paternalistic leadership) shapes Chinese employees' perceptions of meaningful work and their subsequent creative performance. This paper complements the dominant focus on Western leadership in the creativity literature and denotes that paternalistic leadership matters for employee creativity in Chinese organizations.

The purpose of this paper is to understand better why employees voice. Drawing on social information processing theory and insights derived from the literature on power, the authors suggest that leader–member exchange (LMX) fosters voice by reducing the perceived risk of voicing. The authors further contend that high perceived leader power will strengthen this mediated relationship.

The authors relied on a sample of 265 employee-supervisor dyads collected from Chinese organizations to test the study hypotheses.

Results indicated that perceived risk of voicing significantly mediated the positive LMX–voice behavior relationship. In addition, perceived leader power strengthened the effect of LMX on voice behavior via perceived risk of voicing. The relationship of LMX to perceived risk of voicing was more negative, and the indirect effect of LMX on voice behavior was more positive when employees perceived that leader power was high.

Organizations seeking to promote voice behaviors should support leaders to develop high-quality relationships with employees. Organizations should also ensure that leaders are sufficiently empowered to fulfill their roles, and ensure that employees are aware of their leaders’ influence.

Findings suggest that, in the context of high quality leader–member relationships, employees’ perceptions of their leaders’ power may help to overcome barriers associated with speaking up. Thus, this study helps explain the conditions that encourage employees to voice.

Research examining the effect of helping on outcomes related to helpers has gained some mixed results. The purpose of this paper is to reconcile such inconsistency by understanding the multi-dimensional nature of helping behavior.

The authors first develop a helping behavior scale that differentiates between the proactive and reactive form of helping. Furthermore, the authors also examined whether these two forms of helping are differently related to employees’ well-being. Data were collected from 448 employees and their immediate supervisors working in different organizations in the South Jiangsu province, in which the authors examined the main relationship and also explored the mediating effect of meaningfulness.

Results provided corroborating evidence that helping behavior was a multi-dimensional construct, consisting of proactive and reactive dimensions. Furthermore, the authors are also able to support discriminatory validity between these two dimensions by showing that they are differently related to employees’ well-being.

This paper contributes to management practice by specifying the benefits and detriments of different kinds of helping behaviors.

The findings of this study do not only provide ideas to explain contradictions in the effect of helping behaviors on helpers themselves, but also deepens scholars’ knowledge and understanding toward helping behavior.

The study was intended to find out if there was a difference between reactive and proactive helping in terms of developing wellbeing.

There were two studies. Study One involved doing interviews with employees in Chinese businesses, then creating a scale that was used to test a series of hypotheses in Study Two.

The results showed that proactive helping behavior has a significantly positive effect on employees’ well-being. But the coefficients of reactive helping behavior toward work well-being were not significant. Finally, the results showed the significant effect of meaningfulness as a mediator for employees’ wellbeing for both proactive and reactive helping.

The authors felt their research had practical implications for both employees and managers. Specifically, their insights into the nature of different forms of helping could help them manage their careers. Many previous research papers have shown that those who help others are more likely to have successful careers. But the paper suggests that employees who help proactively may gain much more benefit than those helping reactively.