Chenhui Ouyang

Purpose: Expressing opinions and ideas in the workplace is an important aspect of organizational development and employee well-being. However, employee voice intention, which refers to an employee’s willingness to share their opinions or ideas, is an area that has received limited attention in research. Therefore, the aim of this study was to develop and validate a reliable measurement tool for employee voice intention. Methods: The study followed a three-stage process. First, in-depth interviews were conducted with managers and employees from Chinese companies, resulting in 38 qualitative data points. Second, the employee voice intention scale was developed and validated through two surveys. Exploratory factor analysis (N=264) and confirmatory factor analysis (N=260) were performed, respectively. Third, the predictive validity of the scale was assessed by collecting 366 valid responses across three rounds of questionnaires, using voice efficacy and employee voice behavior as correlational calibration criteria. Results: The study employed grounded theory methodology to analyze the qualitative data collected, resulting in the development of a robust conceptual framework of employee voice intention. This framework is composed of two dimensions: perceived desirability and perceived feasibility, which together capture the key factors that influence whether an employee will express their opinions or ideas within an organizational context. A corresponding measurement scale was developed, consisting of nine measurement items that underwent rigorous testing to ensure their reliability and validity. Furthermore, the results of the empirical study showed that employee voice intention mediated the positive effect of voice efficacy on voice behavior, supporting the scale’s predictive validity. Conclusion: This study provides valuable insights into the dimensions of employee voice intention and contributes significantly to the existing literature on this topic by introducing a reliable and valid measurement tool. Furthermore, it advances our understanding of the underlying dimensions associated with this construct.

Differential leadership exists widely in family businesses. How to maintain the effective operation of differential leadership by conforming to cultural traditions and shaping people’s psychology and sense of value has become a popular topic in recent years. At the same time, employee zhengchong (striving for a favor) behavior is common in the family enterprises formed by the logic that there are insiders (employees on leaders’ own side) and outsiders (employees not on leaders’ own side) in family enterprises. How to reasonably guide employee zhengchong behavior is very important to the sustainable development of family enterprises. Based on the social comparison theory, this study focuses on exploring the influence of differential leadership on employee zhengchong behavior. Based on the perspective of a complex network, a network evolutionary game model among employees was constructed, and through numerical simulation, it was attempted to explore the key factors affecting the choice of strategies for employee zhengchong behavior in family enterprises. The simulation results show that the degree of partiality of differential leadership has a certain influence on employee zhengchong behavior. For today’s family businesses, moderate partiality is more conducive to the spread of employee zhengchong behavior. In addition, employees’ perception of differential atmosphere has a positive role in promoting favoritism. Leadership plays an important role in the process of employees showing themselves and improving their skills. Therefore, it is of great significance for the sustainable development of the family business to understand how the differential leadership style can effectively promote the positive behavior of employees. This study innovatively uses the complex network theory to reveal the influence of differential leadership on employee zhengchong behavior and confirms that leaders’ moderate partiality and employees’ perception of differential atmosphere can promote employee zhengchong behavior. The research conclusions can provide practical experience for enterprises.

Purpose: In the current competitive environment of increased uncertainty and instability, it is of significance to promote employee voice behavior. To discuss the issue of how to promote employee voice behavior both effectively and reasonably, this study focuses on ambidextrous leadership, which consists of two seemingly opposite yet potentially complementary behaviors—transformational and transactional leadership—and investigates its influence mechanism on employees’ voice behavior, using work motivation as a mediator and ambidextrous culture as a moderator. Methods: Enterprise employees and their direct supervisors from 78 work teams in China were surveyed, and 387 sets of paired data were analyzed using data analysis software, such as HLM, SPSS, and AMOS. Results: The results reveal that ambidextrous leadership can significantly positively predict employee voice behavior. Employee work motivation plays a partial mediating role in the positive correlation between ambidextrous leadership and voice behavior. Additionally, organizational ambidextrous culture positively moderates the correlation between ambidextrous leadership and the work motivation of employees. The greater the ambidextrous culture of teams is, the stronger the positive correlation between ambidextrous leadership and the work motivation of employees. Conclusion: Leadership plays an important role in promoting employee voice behavior. Therefore, understanding how ambidextrous leadership style can effectively promote voice behavior is important for companies to utilize the power of their employees to respond quickly to change and drive innovative transformation. This study contributes to existing research by revealing how ambidextrous leadership impact employee voice behavior through work motivation, which provides new evidence for the emerging ambidextrous leadership theory and helps to understand the relationship between employee work motivation and voice behavior more comprehensively; it also identifies organizational ambidextrous culture as organizational context factor which moderate the effect of ambidextrous leadership on work motivation.

Purpose: Some scholars have explored the connotation and structural elements of employee zhengchong behaviour based on Taiwan’s local enterprises, providing results with reference significance. However, there is a lack of accurate measurement scales. How to treat employee zhengchong behaviour (striving for a favour) and effectively deconstruct it is very important to the sustainable development of family firms. Methods: Semistructured interviews were conducted with 62 employees of private enterprises, and the structural dimension of employee zhengchong behaviour was explored with the help of grounded theory. The researchers designed two questionnaires, collected 278 and 331 valid questionnaires in the two surveys, compiled the corresponding measurement scale, and tested it. Results: Employee zhengchong behaviour under differential leadership was a multidimensional structure with rich connotations consisting of four dimensions: showing abilities, collaborating and sharing, excluding outsiders, and ingratiating upwards. The scale includes 16 items. Conclusion: This study enriches the relevant theories while providing a decision reference for family firm leaders to guide employee zhengchong behaviour to reasonably improve firm performance.

Among the many workplace stressors, a new type of stressor has been identified: illegitimate tasks. This newly identified type of stressor refers to work tasks that do not meet employee role expectations and constitute a violation of professional identity. To investigate illegitimate tasks’ mediating mechanisms and boundary conditions on job burnout, we examined a cross-level first-stage moderated mediation model with the collective climate as a moderator and psychological entitlement as a mediator. Grounded in the job demands–resources model (JD-R) and justice theory, the current study uniquely posits that illegitimate tasks can lead to burnout by way of psychological entitlement; however, this effect is less where collective climate is higher. Data were collected from 459 employees on 89 teams at enterprises in China. The results of the analysis, using HLM, MPLUS and SPSS revealed that illegitimate tasks stimulated employees’ psychological entitlement and led to job burnout. While employees’ psychological entitlement played a partially mediating role between illegitimate tasks and job burnout, a collective climate could weaken the stimulating effect of illegitimate tasks on employees’ psychological entitlement and then negatively affect the mediating effect of psychological entitlement between illegitimate tasks and burnout. The study reveals the antecedents of burnout from the perspective of job tasks and psychological entitlement, offers practical insight into the mechanism of illegitimate tasks on employee job burnout and recommends that organizations develop a collective climate to reduce employees’ psychological entitlement and job burnout for steady development of the enterprise.