Science Research Management ›› 2022, Vol. 43 ›› Issue (2): 184-192.

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Effects of inclusive leadership on employees′ job-related happiness in the new era

  

  1. 1. Global Institute for Zhejiang Merchants Development, Zhejiang University of Technology, Hangzhou 310023, Zhejiang, China;
    2. School of Management, Zhejiang University of Technology, Hangzhou 310023, Zhejiang, China
  • Received:2021-06-05 Revised:2021-12-03 Online:2022-02-20 Published:2022-02-18

Abstract:     Happiness is the collective goal of mankind. In March 2021, the United Nations released the World Happiness Report, which showed that the happiness index ranking of China rose from 94th to 84th. "2020 Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends" pointed out that 84.0% of Asians respondents rating job-related happiness trend "important" or "very important", which indicated that job-related happiness had become the focus of contemporary employees. Socialism with Chinese characteristics has entered a new era. So employees in the new era, represented by post-80s and post-90s, have great differences in work values from the past, and pay more attention to work self-perception and value realization. Nowadays, "involution" is increasingly serious, employees are involved in the whirlpool of ineffective competition, and their job-related happiness is gradually decreasing. Therefore, it is absolutely necessary to explore the potential mechanism of new era employees′ job-related happiness so as to design improvement measures.
     Among the many factors that affect employees′ job-related happiness, the role of leadership has been paid more attention. Literature shows that inclusive leadership can positively predict employee job-related happiness. However, the previous literature on inclusive leadership and job-related happiness mostly adopted scales developed in western situations, and few integrate Chinese traditional culture and the era background. Supervisor developmental feedback is a guarantee for efficient communication between leaders and employees. Thriving at work is a psychological state in which individuals experience vitality and learning at work, which is closely related to new era employees′ job-related happiness. Therefore, supervisor developmental feedback and thriving at work may form a chain mediating effect between inclusive leadership and job-related happiness.
     We constructed a research framework of the effect of inclusive leadership on new era employees job-related happiness based on Ability-Motivation-Opportunity theory. We conducted an online questionnaire survey on 380 enterprise employees in China, and collected 355 valid samples. The questionnaire mainly covers inclusive leadership scale (Fang Yangchun, 2014), supervisor development feedback scale (Zhou, 2003), thriving at working scale(Porath et al., 2012) and job-related happiness scale(Zheng et al.,2015). The inclusive leadership style scale was developed in the Chinese context. All variables were adjusted to better adapt to the Chinese context. SPSS 22 was adopted for reliability test and AMOS 23 was used for validity test. We use SPSS macro program PROCESS to test the main effect and chain mediating effect.
    The results show that inclusive leadership positively affects new era employees′ job-related happiness. Both supervisor developmental feedback and thriving at work mediate the influence of inclusive leadership on job-related happiness. Supervisor developmental feedback and thriving at work play a chain mediating role between inclusive leadership and job-related happiness.
     There are four aspects of research contributions. First, we analyze the effect of inclusive leadership defined in the Chinese context on job-related happiness, responds to the call for enriching inclusive leadership in Chinese organizational situations. The concept of inclusiveness in Chinese traditional culture is different from western context, and the connotation of inclusive leadership should be richer and deeper. Second, we focus on the topic of new era employees′ job-related happiness, and deepen the related research of job-related happiness promotion of employees in the new era. Researches on employee job-related happiness continue to emerge, but there are few studies that can combine the new era background and the characteristics of employees in the new era. Third, we put forward and verify the mediating role of supervisor developmental feedback and thriving at work. We not only expand the research on supervisor developmental feedback, but also provide a new thinking for the related research of thriving at work and job-related happniess. Fourth, the research constructs a chain mediating path. Compared with single mediating model or multi-mediating model, it can deeply analyze the internal influence mechanism of employees′ job-related happiness in the new era.
     Research suggests that organizations should focus on cultivating inclusive leaders and actively promote employee job-related happiness. In practice, leaders should promptly recognize and support the work achievements of employees, listen to their voice inclusively and openly, and guide employees correctly to realize their growth and development. Leaders should stimulate their internal growth motivation by giving supervisor developmental feedback to boost their career development. In the new era, employees pay special attention to autonomy, participation and right to speak. So the managers should not only let employees actively experience and grow, avoid "involution" and "lying flat", but also hold some open activities and study training to improve their learning enthusiasm, thus promoting their feeling of thriving at work and job-related happiness.

Key words:  inclusive leadership, supervisor developmental feedback, thriving at work, job-related happiness, employee in the new era