采用情境实验(以126名在职MBA学员为被试)与问卷调查(以187名企业员工为研究对象)相结合的方法,考察了中国文化情境下注重"施恩"的仁慈领导方式对员工亲社会性规则违背(PSRB)的影响效果及其边界条件。结果发现:(1)仁慈领导对员工PSRB具有正向影响;(2)组织不确定性对员工PSRB亦具有正向影响,并对仁慈领导与员工PSRB的关系存在负向调节效应。当组织不确定性较高时,这一关系较弱;(3)权力距离取向对员工PSRB具有负向影响,并同样对仁慈领导与员工PSRB的关系存在负向调节效应。当员工权力距离取向较高时,仁慈领导对PSRB的影响较小。不过就调节仁慈领导对员工PSRB影响效果的具体方式而言,组织不确定性发挥着一种替代物的作用,而员工权力距离取向则起着一种抵消物的作用。
For a long time, it has been held by both academics and practitioners in the field of management that the behavior of violating or breaking an organization's formal rules displayed by employees is self-interested, deviant, and detrimental to the organization. In 2006, Morrison introduced a more nuanced perspective on rule breaking, suggesting that some type of rule breaking may be motivated by positive intentions and beneficial to the organization. She further developed and empirically tested the construct of pro-social rule breaking(PSRB). The present research employed a scenario experiment and a field study to examine the effect of benevolent leadership on employee PSRB by focusing on the moderating role of organizational uncertainty and employee values(i.e. zhong-yong and power distance orientation). The scenario of the experiment described certain situation in which an employee had to decide whether or not to break a rule by placing an urgent order for a large, important customer. The study used a between-subjects design in which benevolent leadership(high or low) and organizational uncertainty(high or low) were manipulated, resulting in four versions of scenarios. Totally, 126 part-time MBA students were randomly assigned to one of the scenario versions. At the end of each scenario, participants responded to four questions which were included as checks of the organizational uncertainty and benevolent leadership manipulations. Then, they responded to five questions that assessed the likelihood that they would break the rule. Finally, respondents completed a short survey that assessed zhong-yong and power distance orientation. The results of the experiment revealed that:(1) Benevolent leadership impacted positively on employee PSRB.(2) Organizational uncertainty related positively to employee PSRB and moderated the relationship between benevolent leadership and employee PSRB, such that this relationship was weaker when organizational uncertainty was high.(3) Zhong-yong and power