A Study on the Influence of Responsible Leadership on Civil Servants' Tendency of Avoiding Responsibility

Abstract

In the new era, why should China weaken and eliminate the phenomenon of avoiding responsibility such as "not acting as an official" and "slow acting" that still exist in some parts of the governance, and become a key point in breaking the bottleneck of China's governance capacity leap. This study focuses on 225 civil servants and their main leaders, and uses hierarchical regression method to explore the impact and mechanism of responsible leadership on civil servants' tendency of avoiding responsibility. Research has found that: (1) responsible leadership has a negative impact on the tendency of avoiding responsibility; (2) Subjective responsibility, as an intrinsic motivation, plays a complete mediating role between responsible leadership and tendency of avoiding responsibility; (3) The subjective power distance significantly positively moderates the positive impact of responsible leadership on subjective sense of responsibility; (4) The objective power distance significantly negatively regulates the positive impact of responsible leadership on subjective sense of responsibility. These research results are not only conducive to enriching and expanding the theory of responsible leadership behavior and the impact of power distance in the public sector environment, but also have practical significance in curbing the potential tendency of civil servants to avoid responsibility.