Purpose
– This paper aims to explore the influences of leadership and work stress on employee behavior, and the moderating effects of transactional and transformational leadership on the relationship between work stress and employee negative behavior.
Design/methodology/approach
– Using convenience sampling method, the authors investigated employees from 20 firms in different places and industries, and 347 valid questionnaires were collected. SPSS18.0 statistical analysis software was used for reliability and validity analysis, descriptive statistics, correlation analysis and hierarchical regression analysis to test the hypothesis.
Findings
– The empirical results show that there is a positive correlation between work stress and employee negative behavior. Transformational leadership has negative impacts on work stress and employee negative behavior, whereas transactional leadership has positive influences. Moreover, transactional leadership strengthens the influence of work stress on employee negative behavior, whereas transformational leadership has no moderating effect.
Practical implications
– First, enterprises should take employees’ stress tolerance into account in selection and recruitment, and enhance stress management. Second, by demonstrating inspirational vision and personal charisma, open leadership style, rather than short-term transactional behavior, will motivate subordinates more effectively. Finally, distribution system should be improved to achieve principle and procedural justice.
Originality/value
– The paper extends the research on employee behavior by investigating the impacts of leadership and work stress. According to Chinese social, economic and cultural characteristics, this research examines the influence of contemporary Chinese mindset and pluralistic values on employee behavior. Open leadership is proposed as a new leadership style, which contributes to improving leadership behavior and preventing negative behavior in workplace.
On the basis of Kelly's personal construct theory, Bieri proposed the concept of cognitive complexity, which was mainly applied in the measurement of differentiation grade of individual cognitive structure. Due to its significance in behavior efficiency, cognitive complexity theory has become a hot spot in the area of external cognition research. Theory suggests that leaders who possess higher cognitive complexity are likely to exhibit a higher level of leadership effectiveness. This paper studies the influence of cognitive complexity on leadership effectiveness, and explores the moderating effects of environmental complexity. While the research results show that the cognitive complexity has a significant positive correlation with leadership effectiveness, organizational performance, and organizational commitment, the relationship between cognitive complexity and employee satisfaction is not significant. In addition, environmental complexity moderates the relationship between cognitive complexity and leadership effectiveness.
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