Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-27 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： Although the continuous spread of the pandemic and the rapid development of technology has brought challenges for top managers in China, the environmental uncertainty also offers an opportunity for them to practice and develop leadership skills. To answer what leadership behaviors will help top managers improve organizations’ adaptability and performance in a rapidly changing and complex environment, we developed a new leadership construct, namely, dialectical leadership behavior based on dialectical thinking rooted in the Chinese culture.Dialectical leadership behavior is characterized as a strategic leadership behavior including timely adapting organizational strategy and managerial practices to environmental changes, understanding and balancing between management contradictions, and holistically coordinating different departments and resources in organizations. According to upper echelon theory (Hambrick & Mason, 1984), CEOs’ leadership styles have a profound impact on the strategic choice and performance of the organization. We thus expect CEO dialectical leadership behavior to contribute to firm innovative capability and performance through strategic flexibility in a complex and uncertain business environment.To better understand dialectical leadership, we first developed and validated a scale. We found that dialectical leadership behavior was composed of six dimensions: timely adjusting, individualized mentoring, weighing contradictions, balancing kindness and strictness, promoting coordination, and holistically managing. We further distinguished dialectical leadership behavior from other related leadership constructs with theoretical and empirical efforts. Besides, as top managers of Chinese firms displayed a significantly higher dialectical leadership behavior than those of U.S. companies, the cultural uniqueness of dialectical leadership behavior was justified. Finally, we revealed that CEO dialectical leadership behavior in Chinese companies positively affected firm strategic flexibility and ultimately improved firm innovative capability and performance. We make several contributions. First, scholars constantly explore leadership constructs and practice based on the Western culture. However, the cultural difference between the East and the West matters when it comes to the effectiveness of leadership behaviors. Dialectical leadership behavior provides a new perspective for future exploration of indigenous leadership behaviors and influences by incorporating traditional wisdom of Eastern culture and the reality faced by Chinese enterprises. Second, by developing the measurement of dialectical leadership behavior, we contribute to the future investigation of dialectical leadership behavior and its correlations. Additionally, as we found that CEO dialectical leadership behavior is positively related to firm innovative capability and performance, which are critical for enterprises to survive and thrive during the crisis, we lend confidence in applying wisdom from the Chinese traditional culture to current management practice. Finally, by uncovering the role of firm strategic flexibility in mediating the influence of dialectical leadership behavior on firm innovative capability and performance, we extend understandings about the mechanism through which dialectical leadership behavior matters. We also provide the discussion on the limitation of the study and future research directions.
Hits
Hits
Downloads
Comment