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Role congruity theory and gender stereotypes research suggests men are expected to engage in agentic behavior and women in communal behavior as leaders, and that role violation results in backlash. However, extant gender and leadership research does not directly measure expectations–behavior incongruence. Further, researchers have only considered one condition of role incongruence – display of counter-role behavior – and have not considered the outcomes of failing to exhibit role-congruent behavior. Additionally, few studies have examined outcomes for male leaders who violate gender role prescriptions. The present study aims to address these shortcomings by conducting a novel empirical test of role congruity theory.

This experimental study used polynomial regression to assess how followers evaluated leaders under conditions of incongruence between follower expectations for men and women leaders’ behavior and leaders’ actual behavior (i.e. exceeded and unmet expectations). Respondents read a fictional scenario describing a new male or female supervisor, rated their expectations for the leader’s agentic and communal behavior, read manipulated vignettes describing the leader’s subsequent behavior, rated their perceptions of these behaviors, and evaluated the leader.

Followers expected higher levels of communal behavior from the female than the male supervisor, but no differences were found in expectations for agentic behavior. Regardless of whether expectations were exceeded or unmet, supervisor gender did not moderate the effects of agentic or communal behavior expectations–perceptions incongruence on leader evaluations in polynomial regression analyses (i.e. male and female supervisors were not evaluated differently when displaying counter-role behavior or failing to display role-congruent behavior).

In addition to providing a novel, direct test of role congruity theory, the study highlighted a double standard in gender role-congruent behavior expectations of men and women leaders. Results failed to support role congruity theory, which has implications for the future of theory in this domain.

This study aims to investigate the effect of leadership integrity on employees’ success. In this regard, the mediating role of ethical leadership and the moderating role of psychological capital and psychological empowerment were considered as well.

This study is an applied research and a descriptive-correlation survey that used quantitative data. Data were collected from 302 employees of a large factory in Iran who was selected randomly. The research questionnaire consisted of 54 statements and was distributed among the sample. Data was analyzed through confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling.

The findings of this study show that leader integrity and ethical leadership have a positive effect on employees’ success and psychological capital and psychological empowerment moderate these effects. Moreover, leader integrity has an indirect effect on employees` success through employees’ perception of ethical leadership.

This study mainly contributes by explaining two sets of variables related to leaders’ behavior and employees’ cognitive competence which are complementary in improving employees’ potential success. The results highlight that leaders’ behavioral integrity can amplify ethical leadership which can ultimately leads to employees’ success if they have a high psychological empowerment and psychological capital.

Prior studies have consistently shown that leader psychological capital is beneficial for leader–member exchange (LMX) and followers’ outcomes. In this study, the authors challenge this consensus; they propose that a leader with high-level psychological capital may decrease LMX and promote followers’ turnover intention when encountering a follower with low-level psychological capital. Only congruent psychological capital in leader–follower dyads increases LMX and decreases turnover intention.

A two-wave survey was designed to collect data from a sample of 207 leader–follower dyads in the service industries of China. Polynomial regression combined with the response surface analysis was used to test the hypotheses.

(1) LMX increased when the levels of psychological capital between leaders and followers were congruent, but LMX suffered when they were not congruent (e.g. leaders’ psychological capital was higher than followers’ or otherwise); (2) in the conditions of psychological capital congruence, LMX was higher when a leader’s and a follower’s psychological capital were both high than low; (3) LMX mediated the relationship between psychological capital congruence and followers’ turnover intention.

These findings provide a novel perspective on understanding of the function of psychological capital and its implications for turnover management.

This study aims to analyze the role of trust in the leader as a contextual factor and the personality of the employee as an individual factor in the relationship between transformational leadership (TFL) and resistance to change (RC).

A total of 170 surveys were applied to employees in two organizations that had recently implemented a change. Using hierarchical regression and Hayes’ PROCESS macro, both direct and indirect relationships were analyzed.

The results show that TFL is negatively related to RC. Nevertheless, such a relationship is partially mediated by trust in the leader and moderated by two employee personality traits (openness and neuroticism), both of which strengthen the relationship. Similarly, employee’s openness to experience is negatively related to RC.

This research contributes to understand the relationship between leadership and RC, incorporating both contextual and individual factors, as literature has debated over whether resistant to change obeys to factors surrounding the employees, or within them. While this research contributes to this approach, its contributions extend beyond the leadership–resistance relationship to include indirect (mediation and moderation) relationships. Consideration of the moderating role of the employee’s personality in the effect of the leader’s behavior on the employee’s resistance, for instance, contributes to the development of a theoretical logic that helps to explain the leader–follower interaction and its effect on the follower’s attitudes and behaviors.

By integrating the conservation of resources and the emotion-as-social-information theories, this study aims to question whether the leader’s effort to calm down when team members perceive intra-team conflict (ITC) may have a counterproductive effect on their interpersonal functioning. Specifically, the authors investigated whether team members with higher individual perceptions of ITC would be more likely to experience interpersonal strain (ISW) when their team leaders downregulate or suppress their emotional responses (i.e. high interpersonal modulation of emotional responses [MER]). A further objective of the study was to examine whether this exacerbating effect would be conditional on the leader’s sex.

Data were collected from 236 white collars nested in 48 teams (Msize = 6.23; SDsize = 2.69) and their respective team leaders (56.7% men) of a large organization providing financial services.

Multilevel model results showed that team members confronted with higher ITC experienced higher ISW levels, especially when the leader’s interpersonal modulation of team members’ emotional responses was high (vs low). This effect was stronger when the interpersonal modulation was enacted by women (vs men) team leaders.

This study moves an important step forward in the conflict and ISW literature, as it is the first to identify a leader’s MER and sex as key boundary conditions under which ITC is related to team members’ ISW. The implications of these findings for theory and practice are discussed.

The purpose of the current research is (1) to test affective mechanisms by which a leader's work engagement predicts team performance via a follower's work engagement in a trickle-down fashion and (2) to examine the moderating role of relational identification with the leader on the trickle-down effect.

Multisource and three-wave data was collected from 404 followers working in 76 teams from a construction company in South Korea. By aggregating all study variables, a 2-2-2 level approach by using the PROCESS macro with bootstrapping (10,000 samples) in SPSS was used to test the proposed model.

The current research uses a team-level analysis to examine (1) the effect of a leader's work engagement on team performance via a follower's work engagement and (2) moderating role of relational identification via the lens of the affective processing theory (APT) and the conservation of resource (COR) theory.

Based the lens of APT and COR theory, the current research found that the contagious effect of a leader's work engagement on followers is conditional. Specifically a leader's work engagement has a positive effect on followers' work engagement only when followers have a high sense of relational identification with their leader. However, a leader's work engagement has an adverse effect on followers when followers have a low sense of relational identification.

Previous studies have demonstrated that perceived job insecurity climate denotes an individual-level stressor. The present study reiterated this notion and investigated whether leadership responsibility moderated the association between perceived job insecurity climate and work-related strain about one year into the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic.

A sample of full-time workers (N = 1,399) in the USA was recruited, comprising 663 leaders and 763 non-leaders. Employing a cross-sectional design, the authors hypothesized that perceived job insecurity climate would be associated with work-related strain (i.e. burnout, absenteeism and presenteeism) and that these associations were stronger for employees with leadership responsibilities compared to non-leaders.

Findings revealed main effects of perceived job insecurity climate on burnout but not on absenteeism or presenteeism. Furthermore, leadership responsibility moderated the associations between perceived job insecurity climate and two out of three burnout measures in the hypothesized direction. The findings also revealed interaction effects regarding absenteeism and presenteeism, indicating that these associations are only positive and significant for employees with leadership responsibilities.

Perceptions of widespread job insecurity engender strain among leaders while simultaneously implying a heightened need for effective leadership. Organizations and practitioners should take the present findings into consideration when implementing preventive and restorative measures to address leaders' health and organizational competitiveness when job insecurity increases.

This study found that, as an individual stressor, perceived job insecurity climate is more detrimental to employees with leadership responsibility than to non-leaders.

This paper aims to examine empirical support for 18 hypotheses specifying relationship between leader spiritual behaviours towards subordinates and subordinate work attitudes of job satisfaction, job involvement and affective commitment. It also does concept specification, scale development and a preliminary scale validation for leader spiritual behaviours towards subordinates.

Using a survey design, this study assesses support for 18 hypothesized relationships between leader spiritual behaviours towards subordinates and three forms of subordinate work attitudes and also provides preliminary evidence on the construct validity of the new leader spiritual behaviours towards subordinates scale.

The results are mostly supportive of the hypotheses and also demonstrate the validity of leader spiritual behaviours towards subordinates scale in terms of an interpretable factor structure, high reliability level and convergent and discriminant validity.

The study provides a scale for leader spiritual behaviours towards subordinates. It also outlines meaningful directions for future research.

The positive relationship of leader spiritual behaviours towards subordinates with three work attitudes in this study and already established relationship between these work attitudes and employee performance suggest that managers’ practice of leader spiritual behaviours towards subordinates can potentially enhance employee performance.

The study results suggest that leader spiritual behaviours can enhance positive employee work attitudes and potentially employee performance, and thus can make organizations both spiritual and productive.

This is, to the best of the author’s knowledge, the first study to formally specify the concept and components of leader spiritual behaviours towards subordinates and to demonstrate its positive relationship with three forms of subordinate work attitudes.

Based on the moral licensing theory, this study aims to reveal the mechanism of self-sacrificial leadership inducing abusive supervision from two paths of leader moral credit and leader moral credential. At the same time, it also discusses the moderating effect of leader behavioral integrity on the two paths.

In this study, 434 employees and their direct leaders from six Chinese companies were investigated in a paired survey at three time points, and the empirical data was analyzed using Mplus 7.4 software.

Self-sacrificial leadership has a positive effect on leader abusive supervision through the mediating role of leader moral credit and leader moral credential. In addition, this study also finds that leader behavioral integrity is the “gate” for self-sacrificial leadership to promote abusive supervision, and the leader behavioral integrity has a moderating effect on the process of self-sacrificial leadership influencing on leader moral credit and leader moral credential.

This study explores the evolution of self-sacrificial leadership from “good” to “bad” from the perspective of moral licensing and broadens the research on the mechanism and boundary conditions of self-sacrificial leadership. At the same time, it also provides important reference value for preventing the negative effects of self-sacrificial leadership in organizations.

This study examined the dynamical and positive effects of leader consultation on employee proactivity from a motivational perspective.

Survey data were collected twice a day from 107 employees in a week by using an experience sampling method.

On a daily basis, leader consultation had a positive effect on employees’ state work engagement, which in turn promoted employees’ proactivity. Moreover, authoritarian leadership weakened the positive relationship between leader consultation and employees’ state work engagement.

The findings provided a new perspective regarding the potential dynamic motivational effect of leader consultation on employees and generated interesting implications for paradoxical leadership theory.