Social climate as a mediator between leadership behavior and employee well-being in a cross-cultural perspective

Abstract

Citation: Muhonen, T., Jönsson, S., Denti, L., & Chen, K. (2013). Social climate as a mediator between leadership behavior and employee well-being in a crosscultural perspective. Journal of Management Development, 32(10), 1040-1055. AbstractPurpose -The purpose of this paper is to examine the direct effects of empowering and employee-centered leadership on well-being, and the indirect or mediating role of social organizational climate between leadership behavior and well-being in a cross-cultural perspective. Design/methodology/approach -Questionnaires were distributed in two furniture retail stores in Sweden and two stores in China belonging to the same company. The final sample consisted of 483 participants from the Chinese and 254 participants from the Swedish stores. Findings -The results of the structural equation modeling showed that there was no direct effect between leadership behavior (employee-centered leadership and empowering leadership) and well-being in either the Swedish or the Chinese sample. Further, the findings of the study indicate that social climate mediates the relationship between leadership behavior and employee well-being, but this seems to be culturally contingent. The mediating effect is prevalent in a culture that has been considered as having a collective orientation and where the power distance is high. Research limitations/applications -Despite some methodological limitations such as the crosssectional design and problems with acquiescence in responses, the results indicate the complexity of the role of culture in organizational behavior. Practical implications -Managers working in increasingly globalized contexts need to take into consideration that some organizational behaviors gradually become more universal, whereas others remain culturally contingent.2 Originality/value -The paper illustrates the complex relationship between leadership behavior, social climate and employee well-being in the same corporate culture, but in different cultural settings.

Leadership, followers' mental health and job performance in organizations: A comprehensive meta‐analysis from an occupational health perspective

“…Because heterogeneity, I 2 , is a function of the random effects t 2 and the sampling variance s 2 , I 2 = t 2 / ( s 2 + t 2 ) (Higgins & Thompson, ), the large heterogeneity observed in this review means that the between‐study variance is substantially larger than the total within‐study variance. The relatively large differences among observed correlations are likely to depend on the measurement instruments, the cultural setting (e.g., Kara, Uysal, Sirgy, & Lee, ; Muhonen, Jönsson, Denti, & Chen, ; cf . forest plots in the Supporting Information), and some degree of misclassification of predictor and outcome constructs, rather than on the study characteristics considered in the sensitivity analysis reported in the Results section.…”

Leveraging Leaders

“…Citation r Organizational citizenship behaviors 3 Auh, Menguc, and Jung (2014) .14** (GL) .37** (IL) Raub and Robert (2010) .28* Humborstad et al (2014) .44* Performance 3 Harris et al (2014) .30** Humborstad et al (2014) .38* Vecchio et al (2010) .33** Psychological empowerment 5 Auh et al (2014) .21** (GL) .47** (IL) Chen et al (2011) .45* (S1) .27* (S2) Konczak et al (2000) .46* Raub and Robert (2013) .46* Raub and Robert (2010) . -Córcoles et al (2013) .32** Self determination 1 Yagil and Gal (2002) .31** Service climate 1 Yagil and Gal (2002) .35** Shared values 1 Clark, Hartline, and Jones (2009) .12* Skills 1 Yagil and Gal (2002) .21** Social climate 1 Muhonen, Jonsson, Denti, and Chen (2013) .56** Teamwork behaviors 1 Chen et al (2011) .21* (S1) .15* (S2) Trust in leader 1 Bobbio, Bellan, and Mangenelli (2012) .76** Turnover intentions 1 Chen et al (2011) −.29* (S1) −.25* (S2) Voice 1 Raub and Robert (2013) .26* Note. For individual-level constructs, empowering leadership was measured at the team or individual level in studies listed.…”

The Experience Qualities Approach to Leadership and Employee Well-being

“…In addition, the traditional research field of employee well-being and leadership has mostly utilized psychometric approaches (e.g., Donaldson-Feilder et al 2013;Kelloway et al 2012a;Muhonen et al 2013). These approaches operate in the form of testing settings, mediator/moderator frameworks, and/or fixed questionnaires with Likert scales to reveal the association between leadership and employee well-being, which are thus treated as predetermined phenomena.…”