Search results

The purpose of this paper is to borrow the concept of right-hand person as a specific type of work arrangement and propose a moderated mediation model highlighting the important role of work arrangement in affecting the relationship between abusive supervision and subordinate work outcomes.

The authors tested the hypotheses with a sample of 275 supervisor–subordinate dyads in China (68.8% response rate).

Results showed that if the subordinate was a right-hand person of the supervisor, abusive supervision played a relatively weaker role on the subordinates' performance and organizational citizenship behaviors through leader–member exchange (LMX).

Abusive supervision is a major concern in contemporary organizations, and the current research found that work arrangement such as being a right-hand subordinate could buffer its negative effects. This finding indicates that it is important for organizations and supervisors to make clear work and role assignments.

Abusive supervision has received a lot of research attention in the past decades. On top of the nature of supervisory abusive behaviors, researchers have investigated its antecedents and consequences. However, little is known concerning the roles of the work arrangement for the subordinate that may affect the impact of abusive supervision on subordinate work outcomes. This study empirically tests that being a right-hand subordinate may weaken the negative effect of abusive supervision on subordinate performance and organizational citizenship behaviors, which highlight the importance of work arrangement in studying abusive supervision.

Drawing on the social influence literature and proposing parental intervention as a social influence process, this study seeks to theorize why parental intervention occurs and how it affects young adults' career development.

This paper adopts a conceptual design, offering a conceptual model based on social influence research and career development research.

It is proposed that parental intervention is a result of incongruence between parental expectations and young adults' interested occupations and between parents' assessments of young adults' qualities and job demands. Parents' traditionality moderates these relationships, while the success of parental intervention depends on young adults' traditionality and career maturity. Parents' position, referent and expert powers affect young adults' compliance, identification and internalization, respectively, which impact their occupational commitment and career satisfaction.

Looking at parental intervention over time would help researchers understand this phenomenon more comprehensively than focusing only on its short-term effects as identified in the literature. The motivational processes of parental intervention triggered by power bases play a key role in determining young adults' long-term career consequences.

Career advisors should consider parents as a source of potential intervention in young adults' career choice. They may also provide parent-oriented services in addition to young adult-oriented services.

This framework contributes to the career development literature by adopting social influence approach to explain parental intervention in young adults' career choice and also providing implications for career counselors.

Some indirect evidence indicates that leadership may affect work-related flow, a core concept in positive psychology. However, the exact process of how this relationship takes place is still unknown. Based on the nature of leader-member exchange (LMX), the purpose of this paper is to hypothesize a moderated mediation model of the LMX-flow relationship in which psychological empowerment is the mediator while emotional intelligence (EI) is the moderator.

Two samples are utilized in the study. One sample (n=219) is from the service industry representing a high emotional labor job, and the other sample (n=208) is from the manufacturing industry representing a low emotional labor job.

In both the samples, psychological empowerment mediates the positive relationship between LMX and work-related flow. However, the moderated mediation effect of EI is supported only in the service sample but not in the manufacturing sample.

Leader plays an important role in facilitating subordinates’ flow experience by enhancing psychological empowerment. For the high emotional labor job, employees with high EI are better able to transfer leader’s support into flow experience.

The paper, as the first study to connect LMX with flow concept, advances the study of positive psychology in workplace context, especially the leadership field. By proposing a mediating mechanism and outlining EI as a moderator, the study explains how LMX relates to flow experience at work.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a model explaining the roles of right-hand person and the factors contributing to the successful relationship between the top executive and the right-hand person.

In-depth qualitative case studies are conducted. Longitudinal observations, interviews with six right-hand persons and the top executives in three organizations are conducted to test the propositions of the model.

Results indicate that different types of congruence between the top executive and the right-hand person are required when the right-hand person is performing the roles of an implementer and joint decision maker.

This study extends the leadership literature by investigating the phenomenon of right-hand person of the top executive, which has seldom been studied systematically or scientifically. It provides insights and serves as a stepping stone for future research in this area. One key limitation is that it is a qualitative study with limited samples under investigation.

Practical implications concerning how to build up a successful relationship between the top executive and the right-hand person can be drawn from the proposed model. Insight concerning how to collaborate between the top executive and the right-hand person can be drawn from the in-depth case analyses.

The phenomenon of right-hand person is not limited to business organizations. The collaboration between the key decision maker and his chief assistant should be applicable to other contexts such as non-government organizations.

To the best of the knowledge, this is the first paper that investigates the right-hand person phenomenon in the literature. As the right-hand person of the top executive can have important influence on organizational performance, the study may serve as the stepping stone for further understanding of this important phenomenon.