How and when responsible leadership facilitates work engagement: a moderated mediation model

Abstract

Purpose Leaders are under increasing pressure to cultivate an engaged workforce in responsible ways, but how and when responsible leadership is related to employee work engagement remains unclear. Hence, this study aims to unfold the responsible leadership–work engagement relationship by exploring the mediating role of intrinsic corporate social responsibility (CSR) attributions and the moderating role of interactional justice. Design/methodology/approach A multiphase sample of 225 was collected from employees from the Chinese manufacturing industry. Hierarchical regression and PROCESS macro in SPSS were used to test the authors’ moderated mediation model. Findings The results demonstrate that responsible leadership is directly related to work engagement and indirectly related to it via employees' intrinsic CSR attributions. Interactional justice significantly strengthens the positive relationship between responsible leadership and intrinsic CSR attributions as well as the mediating effects of intrinsic CSR attributions. Practical implications To cultivate an engaged workforce that improves organizational effectiveness, firms and managers should facilitate responsible leadership, signal sincere motives of CSR activities and enhance fair interpersonal treatment at work. These can also be helpful in various fields (e.g. promoting public trust). Originality/value Based on social learning theory and attribution theory, this study empirically reveals the role of responsible leadership in enhancing work engagement. It sheds new light on the psychological mechanism and the boundary condition explaining how and when this linkage occurs, which advances research on responsible leadership and the individual-level analysis of CSR.

Translating responsible leadership into team customer relationship performance in the tourism context: the role of collective job crafting

“…First, the implementation of CFA instead of EFA was ensured by a robust a priori premise for responsible leadership (Voegtlin, 2011). Second, previous studies have tested and validated the measure for responsible leadership (Dong and Zhong, 2022), team job crafting (Uen et al , 2021), customer relationship performance (Menguc et al , 2013) and task and outcome interdependence (Mullins et al , 2020). Third, collective job crafting was measured as a unidimensional variable as earlier discussed, and the instruments for responsible leadership, customer relationship performance, task interdependence and outcome interdependence demonstrate one-dimensionality (Arias Gallegos et al , 2018).…”

“…Tour companies should recruit and select managers or promote members to managerial positions based on their stakeholder-oriented values, contributions to performance goals, support toward others and community engagement (Voegtlin et al , 2020). Leadership training agenda should provide guidance on stakeholder-oriented values and skills as well as how to act responsibly (Dong and Zhong, 2022). Tour companies are advised to provide managers with managerial discretion and support for engaging with diverse stakeholders (Voegtlin et al , 2020).…”

Intervening Role of Sustainability Practices in the Nexuses of Responsible Leadership and Environmental, Task, and Contextual Performance

“…Zhang, Chen, O'Kane, Xiang, & Wang, 2022), and overall performance of the organization (Anwar & Abdullah, 2021). Whereas, individual performance can be boosted through the induction of responsible leaders at workplaces (Dong & Zhong, 2022). So, the present study will explain the role of responsible leadership in relationship with the environmental, task, and contextual performance in the banking sector of Pakistan.…”

How responsible leadership shapes followers’ low-carbon behavior: A dual-mediation model

“…Recently, the research topic of responsible leadership has been attracting increased scholarly attention in the field of organizational behavior ( Waldman and Galvin, 2008 ; Doh and Quigley, 2014 ; Dong and Zhong, 2022 ). Responsible leadership is a social and moral phenomenon that occurs in social processes of interaction ( Maak and Pless, 2006a ; Pless et al, 2012 ), defined as a “values-based and through ethical principles driven relationship between leaders and stakeholders who are connected through a shared sense of meaning and purpose through which they raise one another to higher levels of motivation and commitment for achieving sustainable values creation and social change” ( Pless, 2007 , p: 438).…”

“…Specifically, as a form of value-based leadership style, responsible leadership has been found to be effective in promoting employees’ work-related attitudes and behaviors. For example, empirical research has showed the positive associations between responsible leadership and employees’ higher organizational commitment ( Haque et al, 2019a ), lower intention to quit ( Haque et al, 2019b ; Yasin et al, 2021 ), less unethical pro-organizational behavior ( Cheng et al, 2019 ), and greater work engagement ( Dong and Zhong, 2022 ). Besides, scholars also verified the significant effects of responsible leadership on performance.…”