Impact of benevolent leadership on follower taking charge

Abstract

Purpose The topic of employees’ taking charge behaviors has garnered increasing interest in both practical and academic fields. Leaders play a critical role in influencing followers’ taking charge behaviors, yet few studies have explored the predicting role of benevolent leadership. Drawing from proactive motivation literature, this paper aims to investigate a moderated mediation model that examines work engagement as the mediator and role-breadth self-efficacy as the moderator in the relationship between benevolent leadership and taking charge. Design/methodology/approach Matched data were collected from 297 followers and their group leaders in three subsidiaries of a large telecommunication company in China. The authors used hierarchical linear modeling to test the hypotheses. Findings The results revealed that benevolent leadership was positively related to followers’ work engagement and consequently their taking charge behaviors. Moreover, such moderated mediation relationship was stronger among followers who had low rather than high levels of role-breadth self-efficacy. Research limitations/implications The primary contribution of this study is building a contingent model for the effect of benevolent leadership on follower taking charge and thereby extending the nomological networks of both benevolent leadership and taking charge literatures. Another contribution is that this research provides a new perspective to understand how leadership leads to followers’ taking charge behaviors. Originality/value This is the first study to investigate how and when benevolent leadership predicts follower taking charge.

Inclusive Leadership and Taking-Charge Behavior: Roles of Psychological Safety and Thriving at Work

“…Other studies have shown that empowered and ethical leaders do not have a significant direct impact on employees' taking-charge behavior (Lee, 2016;Qian et al, 2018). Xu et al (2018) also examined the impact of benevolent leadership on employees' proactive change behavior. In contrast, Ouyang et al (2015) found that there is a negative relationship between abusive supervision and proactive behavior because the style of leadership reduces subordinates' perceived insider status within an organization.…”

“…Our findings mainly reveal the positive impact of inclusive leadership on taking-charge behavior. Thus, in response to the call for more context models to reveal the relationship between leadership and taking-charge behavior (Xu et al, 2018), this study expanded existing research at the organizational level and provided an application context. Second, based on SDT and social information processing theory, the variables mediating employees' psychological safety and thriving at work were examined.…”

“…Mediation in existing research is usually explained through traditional social psychology perspectives, such as the social exchange theory, social identity theory, social cognitive theory, motivation theory, etc. The mediators of the relationship between leadership and taking-charge behavior mainly include psychological cognitive factors (e.g., role-breadth, self-efficacy, entitlement, organizational identification, insider status, trust in leader, and identification with leader) (Li et al, 2013(Li et al, , 2015Ouyang et al, 2015;Lee, 2016;Li J. et al, 2016), motivation (Homberg et al, 2017), emotion or attitude (e.g., positive affect and work engagement) (Fritz and Sonnentag, 2009;Xu et al, 2018), and individual behavior (e.g., feedback-seeking) (Qian et al, 2018). On the one hand, our research validates the positive impact of inclusive leadership on taking-charge behavior from the perspective of social information processing theory.…”

How Is Ethical Leadership Linked to Subordinate Taking Charge? A Moderated Mediation Model of Social Exchange and Power Distance

“…Unlike other proactive behaviors, such as individual innovation, voice, and organizational citizenship behaviors (Bies, 1988;Scott and Bruce, 1994;Walumbwa et al, 2012), taking charge has characteristics of being change oriented, risky, and proactive (Morrison and Phelps, 1999;Mcallister et al, 2007). Therefore, whether subordinates take part in taking charge relies on the form of leadership and managerial practices in organizations (Crant, 2000;Ning et al, 2013;Li et al, 2015;Xu et al, 2018).…”

Building-up succession planning program by implementing transformational leadership characteristics: The case of public universities in Terengganu, Malaysia

“…For example, Zhao et al (2016) argued that transformational leaders are people who have the ability to touch the hearts of their subordinates. Transformational leaders are always encouraging leaders, capable of delivering and setting standards of behavior that can be emulated by subordinates (Wu, 2017;Xu et al, 2018). Burn (1978), the founder of the concept of transformational leadership, has set transformational leadership as "a mutual stimulus that transforms followers into leaders and can transform leaders into moral agents."…”