Purpose Whether in traditional manufacturing or modern intelligent manufacturing, craftsmen have always been the backbone of China’s manufacturing industry. Cultivating employee craftsmanship spirit has become one of the top tasks of human resource management in China’s manufacturing industry. The question is what kind of leadership style will promote employee craftsmanship spirit and how can it be promoted? To answer this question, based on self-determination theory and social exchange theory, this study focuses on the influence of spiritual leadership on employee craftsmanship spirit, as well as the moderating effect of having a caring ethical climate and the mediating effect of autonomous motivation between spiritual leadership and employee craftsmanship spirit. Methods The leaders and employees of 103 work teams from Chinese manufacturing enterprises were investigated, and 434 paired data points were obtained. Data analysis and hypothesis testing were conducted using data analysis software, such as HLM, SPSS, and AMOS. Results The results reveal that spiritual leadership can significantly positively predict employee craftsmanship spirit. Employee autonomous motivation plays a partial mediating role in the positive correlation between spiritual leadership and craftsmanship spirit. Additionally, caring ethical climate positively moderates the correlation between spiritual leadership and the autonomous motivation of employees. The greater the caring ethical climate of teams is, the stronger the positive correlation between spiritual leadership and the autonomous motivation of employees. Conclusion Leadership plays an important role in the process of employees improving their skills, acquiring the status of craftsmen, and developing craftsmanship beliefs. Therefore, it is of great significance to understand how spiritual leadership style can effectively promote craftsmanship spirit among employees for high-quality development of the manufacturing industry. This study reveals the ways that spiritual leadership influences employee craftsmanship spirit from a new perspective and confirms the mediating effect of autonomous motivation as well as the moderating effect of caring ethical climate. The research conclusions can provide practical solutions for cultivating employee craftsmanship spirit.

Among the many workplace stressors, a new type of stressor has been identified: illegitimate tasks. This newly identified type of stressor refers to work tasks that do not meet employee role expectations and constitute a violation of professional identity. To investigate illegitimate tasks’ mediating mechanisms and boundary conditions on job burnout, we examined a cross-level first-stage moderated mediation model with the collective climate as a moderator and psychological entitlement as a mediator. Grounded in the job demands–resources model (JD-R) and justice theory, the current study uniquely posits that illegitimate tasks can lead to burnout by way of psychological entitlement; however, this effect is less where collective climate is higher. Data were collected from 459 employees on 89 teams at enterprises in China. The results of the analysis, using HLM, MPLUS and SPSS revealed that illegitimate tasks stimulated employees’ psychological entitlement and led to job burnout. While employees’ psychological entitlement played a partially mediating role between illegitimate tasks and job burnout, a collective climate could weaken the stimulating effect of illegitimate tasks on employees’ psychological entitlement and then negatively affect the mediating effect of psychological entitlement between illegitimate tasks and burnout. The study reveals the antecedents of burnout from the perspective of job tasks and psychological entitlement, offers practical insight into the mechanism of illegitimate tasks on employee job burnout and recommends that organizations develop a collective climate to reduce employees’ psychological entitlement and job burnout for steady development of the enterprise.

Purpose In the current competitive environment of increased uncertainty and instability, it is of significance to promote employee voice behavior. To discuss the issue of how to promote employee voice behavior both effectively and reasonably, this study focuses on ambidextrous leadership, which consists of two seemingly opposite yet potentially complementary behaviors—transformational and transactional leadership—and investigates its influence mechanism on employees’ voice behavior, using work motivation as a mediator and ambidextrous culture as a moderator. Methods Enterprise employees and their direct supervisors from 78 work teams in China were surveyed, and 387 sets of paired data were analyzed using data analysis software, such as HLM, SPSS, and AMOS. Results The results reveal that ambidextrous leadership can significantly positively predict employee voice behavior. Employee work motivation plays a partial mediating role in the positive correlation between ambidextrous leadership and voice behavior. Additionally, organizational ambidextrous culture positively moderates the correlation between ambidextrous leadership and the work motivation of employees. The greater the ambidextrous culture of teams is, the stronger the positive correlation between ambidextrous leadership and the work motivation of employees. Conclusion Leadership plays an important role in promoting employee voice behavior. Therefore, understanding how ambidextrous leadership style can effectively promote voice behavior is important for companies to utilize the power of their employees to respond quickly to change and drive innovative transformation. This study contributes to existing research by revealing how ambidextrous leadership impact employee voice behavior through work motivation, which provides new evidence for the emerging ambidextrous leadership theory and helps to understand the relationship between employee work motivation and voice behavior more comprehensively; it also identifies organizational ambidextrous culture as organizational context factor which moderate the effect of ambidextrous leadership on work motivation.