从谏或噤声？家长式领导对团队创造力的影响

摘要/Abstract

摘要： 当前团队创造力影响因素理论发展需要关注东方情境化领导风格的作用，凸显中国传统文化特色的家长式领导通过影响团队中“直言进谏”的建言行为，从而激活或抑制团队创造力的现象却鲜有研究考察。本文基于内隐性建言理论，探究家长式领导三元素（仁慈领导、威权领导和德行领导）通过影响团队促进性/抑制性建言影响团队创造力的间接效应，以及团队传统性对该间接效应的调节作用。针对113个工作团队数据进行实证检验，得到以下研究结果：仁慈领导、德行领导通过提升促进性/抑制性建言提升团队创造力；威权领导通过削弱促进性/抑制性建言降低团队创造力；随着团队传统性水平降低，威权领导通过抑制性建言施加于团队创造力的消极效应变得不显著。

关键词: 家长式领导, 建言, 团队创造力, 被调节的中介, 情境化研究

Abstract: The development of theory about the antecedents of team creativity requires more attention paid to the role of eastern contextual leadership style. However, among studies focusing on the influence of leadership style on team creativity, leadership styles developed in western context such as transformational leadership and transactional leadership have attracted most attention. There is a lack of research on the influence of leadership style with eastern cultural characteristics (e.g., paternalistic leadership) on team creativity. Paternalistic leadership is a typical leadership style in Chinese traditional culture, with benevolence leadership, authoritarian leadership and moral leadership as its three core elements. It may activate or inhibit team creativity by influencing the voice behavior in the team level.
On account of the lack of research about the unstable influence of paternalistic leadership on team creativity, this study attempts to answer the following research question: whether, how, and when do different elements of paternalistic leadership influence team creativity? The purpose of this study is to advance our understanding of the voicing mechanism through which different elements of paternalistic leadership influence team creativity. Drawing on implicit voice theory, this study tested the mediating effects of team promotive voice and team inhibitive voice through which the three elements of paternalistic leadership affect team creativity, as well as the moderating role of team traditionality in the above mediating effects. Implicit voice theory emphasizes the influence of external environment on human′s voice-related cognitive schema, behavior and output. It provides the theoretical foundation for this study to analyze the voicing mechanism through which paternalistic leadership influences team creativity.
Based on the implicit voice theory, on the one hand, under the influence of the three elements of paternalistic leadership, team members′ cognitive schemas and behavioral patterns related to team promotive voice and team inhibitive voice emerge to the team level, which further lead to changes in team creativity. Therefore, the relationships between the three elements of paternalistic leadership and team creativity are mediated by team promotive voice and team inhibitive voice. On the other hand, Chinese traditional culture emphasizes high power distance and the hierarchical relationship of superiority and inferiority. The stronger team traditionality is, the more team members will abide by their role as inferior person. Then team voice is more easily influenced by paternalistic leadership. Therefore, team traditionality plays a moderating role in the mediating paths through which different elements of paternalistic leadership influence team creativity via team voice.
Based on the above analysis, a theoretical model was built and the related hypotheses were proposed. We collected data of 113 working teams with the collaboration of 24 manufacturing and service firms in Shaanxi and Sichuan provinces in China. In order to avoid common source bias, the data were collected on different variables from multiple sources. Team members reported their collective perception of paternalistic leadership, team traditionality and team promotive/inhibitive voice. Team supervisors reported basic team information and team creativity. The specific research methods were as follows: Firstly, the rwg, ICC (1), and ICC (2) were calculated and the result justified aggregation of the data to the team level. Secondly, we performed a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and adopted the use of Average Variance Extracted (AVE) to assess the convergent and discriminant validity of our team-level constructs. The convergent and discriminant validity was satisfied. Thirdly, the Hierarchical regression was used to test the direct effects and the mediation effects. Lastly, Edwards′ nested equation path analysis was used to test hypotheses about the moderating role of team traditionality in the mediating effects of team promotive/inhibitive voice between paternalistic leadership and team creativity.
The following results were obtained by the empirical study: (1) Benevolence leadership and moral leadership positively affect team creativity through increasing team promotive/inhibitive voice; (2) Authoritarian leadership negatively influences team creativity through decreasing team promotive/inhibitive voice; (3) As team traditionality decreases to some extent, the indirect effect of authoritarian leadership on team creativity through team inhibitive voice becomes not significant.
The innovative work in this study is summarized as follows: first, by investigating the influence of paternalistic leadership on team creativity, this study promotes the development of theory about the influence of eastern contextual leadership on team creativity. Scholars called for the integration of eastern constructs, phenomena and culture into organizational creativity research. Recent research about the influence of leadership style on team creativity paid little attention to the effect of paternalistic leadership which is a typical eastern contextual leadership style. This study showed that different elements of paternalistic leadership have different impacts on team creativity. It implies that future research could integrate eastern contextual construct into their research framework when developing theory about the antecedents of team creativity. Second, by clarifying the mediating role of team promotive/inhibitive voice in the relationship between paternalistic leadership and team creativity, we enrich knowledge about the internal mechanism through which leadership style influences team creativity from a voicing perspective. Existing researches about the internal mechanism between leadership style and team creativity mainly focus on the mediating effects of knowledge sharing and team communication. However, the potential mediating effect of team voice between leadership style and team creativity has been neglected. This study stressed the role of team voice in transforming leadership influence to team creativity. The results imply that future research on team creativity should pay more attention to the voicing mechanism responding to leadership influence. Third, by examining the moderating role of team traditionality in the indirect effect of different elements of paternalistic leadership on team creativity, we identify the boundary condition of the influence of paternalistic leadership on team creativity. The results showed that strength of the impact of authoritarian leadership on team creativity via team inhibitive voice is changed with the level of team traditionality. The research finding confirms that team traditionality is the key boundary condition to decide the strength of leadership influence on team creativity.
This research also provides significant practical implications for managers. By adjusting their leadership style and promoting team voice according to the findings in this study, managers will be able to activate team creativity and help their organization realize the innovation-driven strategy.

Key words: paternalistic leadership, voice, team creativity, moderated mediating effect, contextual study

耿紫珍马乾丁琳. 从谏或噤声？家长式领导对团队创造力的影响[J]. 科研管理, 2021, 42(5): 200-206.

Geng Zizhen, Ma Qian, Ding Lin. Accepting or banning advice? The effect of paternalistic leadership on team creativity[J]. Science Research Management, 2021, 42(5): 200-206.

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