Does Paradoxical Leadership Facilitate Leaders' Task Performance? A Perspective of Self-Regulation Theory.

Silu Chen,Lili Liang,Tao Shen,Yu Zhang

doi:10.3390/ijerph18073505

Abstract

As an emerging Chinese indigenous leadership style, paradoxical leadership has received considerable attention from researchers. Many studies have demonstrated the positive impact of paradoxical leadership on employees, teams, and organizations; however, there is less information on how paradoxical leaders influence their own work outcomes. On the basis of self-regulation theory, in this study, we examined the impact of paradoxical leadership on leaders’ task performance. In addition, we investigated the mediating effects of job crafting and career resilience on this relationship. Through a survey of 120 leaders and 271 of their immediate followers, our empirical analysis found the following: (1) paradoxical leadership was positively related to leaders’ task performance, (2) job crafting mediated the relationship between paradoxical leadership and leaders’ task performance, and (3) career resilience positively moderated the relationship between paradoxical leadership and job crafting, and had an indirect effect on task performance through job crafting. Our model offers novel insights into the paradoxical leadership literature and implications for improving leaders’ job crafting and task performance.

Highlights

We investigated the impact of paradoxical leadership on leaders’ task performance based on self-regulation theory to open the above “black box,” highlighting the necessity and importance of job crafting on leaders
Paradoxical leadership was positively correlated with job crafting (r = 0.22, p < 0.05) and task performance (r = 0.27, p < 0.01), job crafting was positively correlated with task performance (r = 0.52, p < 0. 01), and career resilience was positively correlated with job crafting (r = 0.32, p < 0.01) and task performance (r = 0.19, p < 0.05)
In response to the suggestion that managers engage in job crafting because of its positive influence on their performance [30,31], our study introduced job crafting as the path of action, providing a more appropriate perspective for understanding the impact of paradoxical leaders on their own task performance

Summary

Introduction

Ferreira and Paradoxical leadership refers to leaders who simultaneously use two mutually opposing, interdependent, and complementary behaviors to satisfy both structural and individual needs [1]. This type of leadership is the most effective when leaders deal with organizational paradoxes related to balancing short- and long-term goals [2]. The literature on paradoxical leadership has mainly focused on recipients of such leadership practices; more recent studies have shown that there are benefits for the leaders themselves [12,13]. We focused on leaders’ task performance, which has been considered by Organ and Paine [17] We focused on leaders’ task performance, which has been considered by Organ and Paine [17] (p. 375) to be “part and Gabriele Giorgi

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion