Linking emotion regulation strategies to employee motivation: The mediating role of guanxi harmony in the Chinese context

Abstract

This study examined the mediating role of guanxi harmony, a concept of interpersonal relationships specific to the Chinese context, between leaders’ emotion regulation strategies and employee motivation. Data were drawn from 489 on-the-job MBA students with enough management experience from thirteen different types of cities in China. The study tested the model using hierarchical regression. The results showed that the reappraisal strategy was positively related to employee motivation and the suppression strategy was negatively related to employee motivation in the Chinese context. Guanxi harmony played a partially mediating role between reappraisal and employee motivation, and played a fully mediating role between suppression and employee motivation. These findings suggest that in the Chinese context, guanxi harmony between leaders and employees has a positive effect on employee motivation, and when leaders apply appropriate emotion regulation strategies, they can achieve guanxi harmony and promote employee motivation.

Managing Employee Motivation in Slovak Universities from the Perspectives of Time and Age

“…While previous research [14,[51][52][53] mainly investigates employee motivation in the corporate sphere, due attention should be paid to employees in the public sector as well [54,55]. The aim is to investigate which factors influence the motivation of university teachers in the country.…”