Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-j824f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T10:02:55.164Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Affect-driven impact of paradoxical leadership on employee organizational citizenship behaviour

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 November 2021

Silu Chen Open the ORCID record for Silu Chen [Opens in a new window] ,
Zhi Wang ,
Yu Zhang Open the ORCID record for Yu Zhang [Opens in a new window]  and
Kaili Guo
Silu Chen
Affiliation:
School of Economics and Business Administration, Central China Normal University, Wuhan, Hubei, China
Zhi Wang
Affiliation:
School of Economics and Business Administration, Central China Normal University, Wuhan, Hubei, China
Yu Zhang*
Affiliation:
School of Economics and Business Administration, Central China Normal University, Wuhan, Hubei, China
Kaili Guo
Affiliation:
School of Economics and Business Administration, Central China Normal University, Wuhan, Hubei, China
*
Author for correspondence: Yu Zhang, E-mail: zy3535yu@163.com
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Paradoxical leadership is an emerging leadership style which describes leadership behaviours that are ostensibly contradictory but in reality are interrelated and address workplace demands simultaneously and over time. The present study is based on affective events theory (AET), which states that occurrences or events at work result in prompt positive or negative affect in employees. The purpose of the study is to examine the mediating role of positive affect on the relationship between paradoxical leadership and employee organizational citizenship behaviour (OCB). We also examine the moderating role of procedural fairness on the relationship between employee positive affect and OCB. Data collected in two phases in small- and medium-sized Chinese companies indicate that positive affect fully mediates the relationship between paradoxical leadership and employee OCB, and this relationship was found to be stronger when procedural fairness was higher rather than lower. We provide theoretical and practical implications of these findings.

Keywords

AETOCBparadoxical leadershippositive affectprocedural fairness
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Management & Organization , First View , pp. 1 - 14
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press and Australian and New Zealand Academy of Management 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Aiken, L. S., & West, S. G. (1991). Multiple regression: Testing and interpreting interactions. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.Google Scholar
Bachrach, D. G., Hui, W., Bendoly, E., & Zhang, S. (2007). Importance of organizational citizenship behaviour for overall performance evaluation: Comparing the role of task interdependence in China and the USA. Management & Organization Review, 3(2), 255–276.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bachrach, D. G., & Jex, S. M. (2000). Organizational citizenship and mood: An experimental test of perceived job breadth1. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 30(3), 641–663.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boyraz, G., & Efstathiou, N. (2011). Self-focused attention, meaning, and posttraumatic growth: The mediating role of positive and negative affect for bereaved women. Journal of Loss and Trauma, 16(1), 13–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brislin, R. W. (1980). Translation and content analysis of oral and written materials. Handbook of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 2(2), 389–444.Google Scholar
Brockner, J. (2002). Making sense of procedural fairness: How high procedural fairness can reduce or heighten the influence of outcome favorability. Academy of Management Review, 27(1), 58–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carlson, D. S., Kacmar, K. M., Grzywacz, J. G., Tepper, B., & Whitten, D. (2013). Work-family balance and supervisor appraised citizenship behavior: The link of positive affect. Journal of Behavioral and Applied Management, 14(2), 87–106.Google Scholar
Clark, L. A., Watson, D., & Leeka, J. (1989). Diurnal variation in the positive affects. Motivation & Emotion, 13(3), 205–234.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Colquitt, J. A. (2001). On the dimensionality of organizational justice: A construct validation of a measure. Journal of Applied Psychology, 86(3), 386–400.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Colquitt, J. A., Scott, B. A., Rodell, J. B., Long, D. M., Zapata, C. P., Conlon, D. E., & Wesson, M. J. (2013). Justice at the millennium, a decade later: A meta-analytic test of social exchange and affect-based perspectives. Journal of Applied Psychology, 98(2), 199–236.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cropanzano, R., Byrne, Z. S., Bobocel, D. R., & Rupp, D. E. (2001). Moral virtues, fairness heuristics, social entities, and other denizens of organizational justice. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 58(2), 164–209.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Damen, F., Knippenberg, B. V., & Knippenberg, D. V. (2008). Affective match: Leader emotional displays, follower positive affect, and follower performance. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 38(4), 868–902.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
De Clercq, D., & Belausteguigoitia, I. (2020). When does job stress limit organizational citizenship behavior, or not? Personal and contextual resources as buffers. Journal of Management & Organization, 1–25.Google Scholar
De Cremer, D., & Van Knippenberg, D. (2002). How do leaders promote cooperation? The effects of charisma and procedural fairness. Journal of Applied Psychology, 87(5), 858–866.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ding, H., & Lin, X. Q. (2020). Individual-focused transformational leadership and employee strengths use: The roles of positive affect and core self-evaluation. Personnel Review, 50(3), 1022–1037.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Estrada, C. A., Isen, A. M., & Young, M. J. (1994). Positive affect improves creative problem solving and influences reported source of practice satisfaction in physicians. Motivation and Emotion, 18(4), 285–299.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Folger, R., & Konovsky, M. A. (1989). Effects of procedural and distributive justice on reactions to pay raise decisions. Academy of Management Journal, 32(1), 115–130.Google Scholar
Franken, E., Plimmer, G., & Malinen, S. (2020). Paradoxical leadership in public sector organisations: Its role in fostering employee resilience. Australian Journal of Public Administration, 79(1), 93–110.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grant, A. M., & Mayer, D. M. (2009). Good soldiers and good actors: Prosocial and impression management motives as interactive predictors of affiliative citizenship behaviors. Journal of Applied Psychology, 94(4), 900–912.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Greenberg, J. (1990). Organizational justice: Yesterday, today, tomorrow. Journal of Management, 16(2), 399–432.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hair, J. F., Anderson, R. E., Tatham, R. L., & Black, W. C. (1998). Multivariate data analysis, 5th Ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall International.Google Scholar
Haller, M., & Hadler, M. (2006). How social relations and structures can produce happiness and unhappiness: An international comparative analysis. Social Indicators Research, 75(2), 169–216.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hoffman, B. J., Blair, C. A., Meriac, J. P., & Woehr, D. J. (2007). Expanding the criterion domain? A quantitative review of the OCB literature. Journal of Applied Psychology, 92(2), 555–566.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hon, A., & Lu, L. (2010). The mediating role of trust between expatriate procedural justice and employee outcomes in Chinese hotel industry. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 29(4), 669–676.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ilies, R., Nahrgang, J. D., & Morgeson, F. P. (2007). Leader–member exchange and citizenship behaviors: A meta-analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology, 92(2), 269–277.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ilies, R., Scott, B. A., & Judge, T. A. (2006). The interactive effects of personal traits and experienced state on intraindividual patterns of citizenship behaviors. Academy of Management Journal, 49(3), 561–575.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Isen, A. M., & Baron, R. A. (1991). Positive affect as a factor in organizational behavior. Research in Organizational Behavior, 13, 1–53.Google Scholar
Ishaq, E., Bashir, S., & Khan, A. K. (2019). Paradoxical leader behaviors: Leader personality and follower outcomes. Applied Psychology: An International Review, 70(1), 342–357.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ko, C., Ma, J., Kang, M., English, A. S., & Haney, M. H. (2017). How ethical leadership cultivates healthy guanxi to enhance OCB in China. Asia Pacific Journal of Human Resources, 55(4), 408–429.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lavine, M. (2014). Paradoxical leadership and the competing values framework. Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 50(2), 189–205.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Li, Q., She, Z., & Yang, B. (2018). Promoting innovative performance in multidisciplinary teams: The roles of paradoxical leadership and team perspective taking. Frontiers in Psychology, 9, 1083.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lind, E. A. (2001). Fairness heuristic theory: Justice judgements as pivotal cognitions in organizational relations. In Greenberg, J. & Cropanzano, R. (Eds.), Advances in organizational justice (pp. 56–88). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Loi, R., Yang, J., & Diefendorff, J. M. (2009). Four-factor justice and daily job satisfaction: A multilevel investigation. Journal of Applied Psychology, 94(3), 770–781.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lyubomirsky, S., King, L., & Diener, E. (2005). The benefits of frequent positive affect: Does happiness lead to success? Psychological Bulletin, 131(6), 803–855.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mischel, W., & Shoda, Y. (1995). A cognitive-affective system theory of personality: Reconceptualizing situations, dispositions, dynamics, and invariance in personality structure. Psychological Review, 102(2), 246–268.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mostafa, A. M. S. (2016). High-performance HR practices, positive affect and employee outcomes. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 32(2), 163–176.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Murphy, K., & Tyler, T. (2008). Procedural justice and compliance behaviour: The mediating role of emotions. European Journal of Social Psychology, 38, 652–668.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Muthén, L. K., & Muthén, B. O. (2012–2017). Mplus: Statistical analysis with latent variables: User's guide. Los Angeles: Muthén & Muthén.Google Scholar
Newman, A., Schwarz, G., Cooper, B., & Sendjaya, S. (2017). How servant leadership influences organizational citizenship behavior: The roles of LMX, empowerment, and proactive personality. Journal of Business Ethics, 145(1), 49–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nohe, C., & Hertel, G. (2017). Transformational leadership and organizational citizenship behavior: A meta-analytic test of underlying mechanisms. Frontiers in Psychology, 8, 1364.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
O'Neill, O. A., Stanley, L. J., & O'Reilly, C. A. (2011). Disaffected Pollyannas: The influence of positive affect on salary expectations, turnover, and long-term satisfaction. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 84(3), 599–617.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Organ, D. W., & Ryan, K. (1995). A meta-analytic review of attitudinal and dispositional predictors of organizational citizenship behavior. Personnel Psychology, 48(4), 775–802.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pan, Z. (2021). Paradoxical leadership and organizational citizenship behaviour: The serial mediating effect of a paradoxical mindset and personal service orientation. Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 42(6), 869–881.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Park, I. J., Shim, S. H., Hai, S., Kwon, S., & Kim, T. G. (2021). Cool down emotion, don't be fickle! The role of paradoxical leadership in the relationship between emotional stability and creativity. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 1–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Podsakoff, P. M., Mackenzie, S. B., & Podsakoff, N. (2012). Sources of method bias in social science research and recommendations on how to control it. Social Science Electronic Publishing, 63(1), 539–569.Google ScholarPubMed
Podsakoff, N. P., Whiting, S. W., Podsakoff, P. M., & Blume, B. D. (2009). Individual- and organizational-level consequences of organizational citizenship behaviors: A meta-analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology, 94(1), 122–141.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Preacher, K. J., & Hayes, A. F. (2004). SPSS and SAS procedures for estimating indirect effects in simple mediation models. Behavior Research Methods Instruments & Computers, 36(4), 717–731.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rioux, S. M., & Penner, L. A. (2001). The causes of organizational citizenship behavior: A motivational analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology, 86(6), 1306–1314.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rosing, K., Frese, M., & Bausch, A. (2011). Explaining the heterogeneity of the leadership-innovation relationship: Ambidextrous leadership. Leadership Quarterly, 22(5), 956–974.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rousseau, V., & Aube, C. (2010). Social support at work and affective commitment to the organization: The moderating effect of job resource adequacy and ambient conditions. Journal of Social Psychology, 150(4), 321–340.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Shao, Y., Nijstad, B. A., & Täuber, S. (2019). Creativity under workload pressure and integrative complexity: The double-edged sword of paradoxical leadership. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 155, 7–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, W. K., & Lewis, M. W. (2011). Toward a theory of paradox: A dynamic equilibrium model of organizing. Academy of Management Review, 36(2), 381–403.Google Scholar
Spence, J. R., Brown, D. J., Keeping, L. M., & Lian, H. (2014). Helpful today, but not tomorrow? Feeling grateful as a predictor of daily organizational citizenship behaviors. Personnel Psychology, 67(3), 705–738.Google Scholar
Stephens, J. P., Heaphy, E., & Dutton, J. E. (2012). High quality connections. In Cameron, K. S., & Spreitzer, G. (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of positive organizational scholarship (pp. 385–399). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Sun, L. Y., Chow, I., Chiu, R. K., & Pan, W. (2013). Outcome favorability in the link between leader-member exchange and organizational citizenship behavior: Procedural fairness climate matters. Leadership Quarterly, 24(1), 215–226.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van den Bos, K. (2001). Uncertainty management: The influence of uncertainty salience on reactions to perceived procedural fairness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 80(6), 931–941.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Van Knippenberg, D., De Cremer, D., & Van Knippenberg, B. (2007). Leadership and fairness: The state of the art. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 16(2), 113–140.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vermunt, R., Van Knippenberg, D., Van Knippenberg, B., & Blaauw, E. (2001). Self-esteem and outcome fairness: Differential importance of procedural and outcome considerations. Journal of Applied Psychology, 86(4), 621–628.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Volmer, J. (2015). Followers’ daily reactions to social conflicts with supervisors: The moderating role of core self-evaluations and procedural justice perceptions. Leadership Quarterly, 26(5), 719–731.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Waldman, D. A., & Bowen, D. E. (2016). Learning to be a paradox-savvy leader. Academy of Management Perspectives, 30(3), 316–327.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Walumbwa, F. O., Hartnell, C. A., & Oke, A. (2010). Servant leadership, procedural justice climate, service climate, employee attitudes, and organizational citizenship behavior: A cross-level investigation. Journal of Applied Psychology, 95(3), 517–529.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Watson, D., Clark, L. A., & Tellegen, A. (1988). Development and validation of brief measures of positive and negative affect: The PANAS scales. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54(6), 1063–1070.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wegge, J., Dick, R. V., Fisher, G. K., West, M. A., & Dawson, J. F. (2006). A test of basic assumptions of affective events theory (AET) in call centre work. British Journal of Management, 17(3), 237–254.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weiss, H. M., & Cropanzano, R. (1996). Affective events theory: A theoretical discussion of the structure, cause and consequences of affective experiences at work. Research in Organizational Behavior, 18(3), 1–74.Google Scholar
Williams, S., & Shiaw, W. T. (1999). Mood and organizational citizenship behavior: The effects of positive affect on employee organizational citizenship behavior intentions. The Journal of Psychology, 133(6), 656–668.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Xue, Y., Li, X., Liang, H., & Li, Y. (2020). How does paradoxical leadership affect employees’ voice behaviors in workplace? A leader-member exchange perspective. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 17(4), 1162–1185.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Yang, Y., Li, Z., Liang, L., & Zhang, X. (2021). Why and when paradoxical leader behavior impact employee creativity: Thriving at work and psychological safety. Current Psychology, 40, 1911–1922.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zhang, Y., Waldman, D. A., Han, Y. L., & Li, X. B. (2015). Paradoxical leader behaviors in people management: Antecedents and consequences. Academy of Management Journal, 58(2), 538–566.CrossRefGoogle Scholar