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The purpose of this paper is to examine employee perceptions of fairness and work morale as mediators of the relationship between leader reward behavior and employee behavior.

A matrix of meta‐analytic estimates containing the focal variables (leader reward behavior, fairness, morale, and employee behavior) was constructed following a literature review of published studies. This matrix was then analyzed using structural equation modeling to test a series of nested models.

Leader reward behavior is positively related to higher task performance and organizational citizenship behavior, and fewer intentions to turnover. These relationships are mediated by employees’ perceptions of fairness and work morale.

The paper extends the leadership literature by identifying two mechanisms (viz., fairness and morale) through which leader reward behavior relates to employee behavior. Possible limitations are the drawbacks associated with meta‐analysis (e.g. inability to make causal inferences).

Rewarding subordinate performance alone is not sufficient to increase task performance and organizational citizenship behavior and decrease turnover intentions. Instead, managers must ensure that their contingent reward behaviors are seen as fair by employees in order to have favorable effects.

To date, research on possible mediators of the effects of leader reward behavior has been scarce.

This study focuses on the relationship between contingent reward behavior and subordinate employees’ performance in the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) sector.

The instruments used in this study were the leader–member exchange questionnaire and the contingent reward behavior questionnaire, which was completed by salespeople.

The results of the study (which assessed 37 respondents) indicate a meaningful relationship between contingent reward behavior and leader–member exchange. Based on these results, researchers focused on one division in the sales department that has a low leader–member exchange by providing intervention in the form of leadership coaching. The sigficant results between pre- and post-test differences, using Wilcoxon signed-rank test, indicate that the coaching intervention improved contingent reward behavior and increased leader–member exchange.

The main limitation of this study was that it involved only 44 salespeople from one company. Therefore, the results may not be generalizable.

Coaching could be an effective approach to improve leaders’ contingent reward behavior.

This study provides more evidence that coaching can help leaders improving their behavior, particularly in relation to leader–member exchange.

This study supposes to provide new insights into the role of leader behaviors in motivating employees by examining how and when spiritual leadership and contingent reward leadership facilitate employee vigor at work.

Drawing from self-determination theory (SDT), the current study proposes that spiritual leadership intrinsically motivates employees, whereas contingent reward leadership extrinsically motivates employees – both of which subsequently improve employee vigor at work. The theoretical model was tested through a sample of 191 employees collected across three time points in China.

Results revealed that spiritual leadership positively facilitates employee vigor at work through enhancing their work enjoyment, and employees' need for achievement can amplify the effects of spiritual leadership. In addition, employees' performance-reward expectancy transmits the effects of contingent reward leadership on employee vigor at work, and leaders' performance expectations play a key role in strengthening the positive influences of contingent reward leadership.

Based on SDT, this study provides a comprehensive explanation of how and when two patterns of leader behaviors affect employee vigor at work. Therefore, the authors provide significant insights for leadership and work design in human resource management.

Based on social dilemma theory, the authors analyze the impact of leader reward omission on employee knowledge sharing and the boundary conditions in their relationship.

This study tested the theoretical hypotheses based on empirical data obtained from 264 employees using a two-wave survey method.

The results indicate that leader reward omission significantly negatively affects employee knowledge sharing. An employee's proactive personality weakens the negative relationship between them; the weakening effects of an employee's proactive personality would decrease along with the perceived increase in organizational unfairness.

This study provides the first insight that leader reward omission can inhibit employee knowledge-sharing behavior. In addition, this study shows that an individual proactive personality and perceived organizational unfairness moderate the relationship between leader reward omission and employee knowledge behavior. Thus, this study provides a more comprehensive understanding of whether and when leader reward omission affects employee knowledge sharing.

In this paper, the moderating roles of leader reward omission and person–supervisor fit in the relationship between job autonomy and knowledge hiding are investigated.

Using a sample of 248 employees in a two-wave survey, we performed a hierarchical regression analysis to test the hypotheses.

The results revealed that employees with high job autonomy were less likely to engage in knowledge hiding. Moreover, when employees experienced leader reward omission, the negative relationship between job autonomy and knowledge hiding was weakened, and this interesting effect varied by person–supervisor fit.

This study does not explore the mediating mechanism by which job autonomy affects employee knowledge hiding. Moreover, as this research was conducted in a Chinese context, the generalizability of our findings is unclear.

This research has fulfilled its practical aims by providing advice on knowledge-relevant job characteristic factors that can be used to stage interventions regarding the provision of autonomy in jobs, and by carefully considering how to create interdependence between jobs without pushing people to engage in knowledge-hiding behaviors. Furthermore, it is important for leaders to help employees identify work goals and directions and not engage in reward omission.

This study contributes to theoretical advancements in the field of knowledge hiding by revealing boundary conditions that mitigate or enhance the impact of job autonomy on knowledge hiding.

This research examined the relationship between the behaviors associated with transformational, transactional, and laissez‐faire leadership and followers’ success in marketing financial services in a proximal sales unit environment. Although transformational leadership has received significant support in non‐sales settings, empirical research investigating the transformational sales manager/sales follower dyad is limited. Recent research has suggested that a transactional style of sales management may be preferable when attempting to influence follower work outcomes. This examination reports results that support the notion that transformational sales leadership may be advantageous to services sales organizations in settings where sales managers and their followers are in close proximity.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to examine a customer orientation mechanism through which abusive supervision influences retail salespeople’s job performance; and second, to investigate how abusive supervision’s effects may be moderated by the same leader’s use of contingent punishment and contingent reward.

Two studies provide consistent findings. Study 1 used the field survey data from 129 salespeople in 42 retail stores. The proposed moderated mediation model was estimated using the random coefficient modeling technique. Findings were replicated in Study 2, in which data were collected from a sample of 679 US retail salespeople recruited through M-Turk.

Results from both studies show that abusive supervision reduces salespeople’s job performance through lowering their customer orientation. Furthermore, the use of contingent punishment from the same supervisor buffers abusive supervision’s detrimental effect, whereas the use of contingent reward augments it.

The issues the authors address in this research have significant implications for the literature of abusive supervision and retail selling. First, the authors contribute to the abusive supervision literature by pointing it out that the negative effect of abusive supervision can spill over to organizations’ external stakeholders, namely, customers. Previous research on abusive supervision has mainly focused on how abused subordinates exhibit hostile acts directed against the supervisor, coworkers and the organization (Tepper et al., 2017), with little attention paid to abusive supervision’s impact on organizations’ external stakeholders such as customers. This research fills the void by placing impaired customer-orientation as a critical consequence of abusive supervision. Second, this research tests a contingent self-regulation impairment model of abusive supervision and advances our understanding about how the same supervisor’s functional leadership behaviors (contingent reward/punishment) may set contingencies for the effect of abusive supervision on employee outcomes. This investigation clears the doubts about whether the use of functional leadership behaviors along with abusive supervision buffers or aggravates the detrimental effect of the latter. Finally, this study’s findings shed new insights to marketing practitioners, especially in understanding how salespeople may vent their stress on the customers when being abused by their supervisors. Without this in mind, supervisors may not be aware of the consequences of their abusive behavior and may even develop an illusion that such a practice worked. This research shows that abusive supervision can lower employees’ customer orientation, which will hurt the company in the long run.

The findings intend to provide important guidelines for companies to develop effective workshops and training programs to combat the detrimental effects of abusive supervision in the retailing industry. For example, the findings shed new insights in understanding how employees may vent their stress on the customers when being abused by their supervisors. Without this in mind, supervisors may not be aware of the consequences of their abusive behavior and may even develop an illusion that such a practice worked. Another important managerial implication of this research is that the use of contingent reward after mistreating subordinates can backfire. Supervisor abuses, followed by a contingent reward, send an inconsistent signal to the employee that creates confusion and strain. Inconsistent actions from the supervisor also produce ethical tensions that reduce customer-oriented behaviors and a company’s ability to serve the customer (Friend et al., 2020). These training programs are important methods to combat the detrimental effects of abusive supervision in the workforce.

This research draws on the contingent self-regulation impairment model as an overarching framework to unpack the relationship between abusive supervision and salespeople’s job performance. Integrating three research streams (i.e. abusive supervision, leadership reinforcement and retail selling), this study proposes customer orientation as a novel mechanism and sheds light on how abusive supervision interplays with contingent punishment/reward to impact salespeople’s outcomes.

This issue is a selected bibliography covering the subject of leadership.

This study aims to examine how reward expectancy mediates the effect of abusive supervision on organizational citizenship behavior. Furthermore, drawing upon regulatory focus theory, this paper proposes and tests the moderating role of promotion focus in the proposed mediating effect.

Both hierarchical regression and PROCESS macro are conducted to analyze longitudinal data collected from 142 MBA students in different industries in the People’s Republic of China.

Results reveal that abusive supervision was negatively related to both organization-directed citizenship behavior (OCBO) and individual-directed citizenship behavior (OCBI) through undermining individual reward expectancies. Results also show that promotion focus moderated the negative effect of abusive supervision on reward expectancy, such that the relationship was stronger when promotion focus was higher. In addition, the indirect effect of abusive supervision on OCBO and OCBI carried through reward expectancy was also stronger among individuals with higher promotion focus.

It contributes to the literature on abusive supervision by offering a new perspective regarding the mechanism of abusive supervision influence on organizational citizenship behavior. The findings thus shed insights into cognitions and motivations that are associated with organizational citizenship behavior. In addition, it is the first to link abusive supervision with regulatory focus theory to examine the decrease of organizational citizenship behavior.

The purpose of this article is to explore employee age as a moderating factor in the relationship between leader contingent reward behavior (CRB) and work engagement. In doing so, the authors seek to provide a more nuanced understanding of the mediating role of work engagement in the negative effect of leader CRB on turnover intention.

The authors used online surveys among a sample of employees of a retail company in Chile to capture individual perceptions about supervisor CRB, work engagement and turnover intention. To test the authors’ hypotheses, they modeled a first-stage moderated mediation effect using Hayes’ Process macro.

The authors’ results confirm the hypothesis that the negative effect of leader CRB on employee turnover intention is partially mediated by employee work engagement. Interestingly, age was a significant moderator of the mediation effect only for individuals working at headquarters, but not for employees working in stores.

This study expands current knowledge about how the leadership–engagement relationship can predict organizational outcomes, including age as a boundary condition. Following the job demands-resources theory, the authors also prove that conceptualizing leader CRB as a job resource can benefit the integration of leadership and work engagement research. The authors’ findings may help organizational researchers and practitioners acknowledge contextual differences in understanding the combined effects of leadership styles and work engagement.

El propósito de este artículo es explorar la edad del empleado como un factor moderador en la relación entre el comportamiento de recompensa contingente del líder, engagement laboral, e intención de renuncia.

Usamos encuestas en línea, en una muestra de empleados de una empresa de retail en Chile, para capturar las percepciones individuales sobre los comportamientos de recompensa contingente de los supervisores, el engagement laboral, y la intención de renuncia. Para probar nuestras hipótesis modelamos un efecto de mediación moderada de primera-etapa utilizando el macro Process de Hayes.

Los resultados confirman la hipótesis de que las recompensas contingentes del líder están negativamente relacionadas con la intención de renuncia. Este efecto está parcialmente mediado por el nivel de engagement laboral del empleado. Curiosamente, la edad fue un moderador significativo del efecto de mediación sólo para quienes trabajaban en la oficina central, pero no para quienes trabajan en las tiendas.

Nuestro estudio amplía el conocimiento actual sobre cómo la relación liderazgo-compromiso puede predecir resultados organizacionales, incluyendo la edad como condición de borde. Basados en la teoría de las demandas y recursos del trabajo (job demands-resources theory), mostramos que, al conceptualizar el comportamiento de recompensa contingente del líder como un recurso laboral, se puede beneficiar la investigación sobre la integración del liderazgo y el engagement laboral. Nuestros hallazgos pueden beneficiar a investigadores y profesionales de las organizaciones al reconocer las diferencias contextuales en la comprensión del efecto combinado de los estilos de liderazgo y el engagement laboral.