Abstract

The employee flexibility desired in changing and uncertain business environments is amplified in small business settings. How can small business leaders facilitate the employee flexibility needed in this context? In the present study, we proposed that mastery goal-oriented leaders who are concerned with learning and competence development would create a work climate that promoted employee flexibility in their firms. We tested our hypotheses with multi-wave, multi-level data collected from leaders and employees in 141 small accounting firms in Norway. Findings revealed that leaders’ mastery goal orientation (MGO) was positively related to employee flexibility through a work climate that encouraged learning and development (a mastery climate). Yet, we also found that leaders’ MGO was negatively related to employee flexibility through a work climate that emphasized the expectations to be adaptive and flexible (an adaptability climate). Taken together, our study suggests that leaders’ mastery goal orientation may fuel employee flexibility when encouraging flexible-related behavior yet backfire when they signal that the same behavior is expected.

Highlights

  • Flexible employees who can quickly acquire new skills and effectively adapt to changing work demands are valuable resources in business environments characterized by change and uncertainty (Beltrán-Martín and Roca-Puig, 2013; Camps et al, 2016)

  • We extend Dragoni’s (2005) conceptual model to account for the different work climates that could be induced by mastery-oriented leaders, and apply self-determination theory (SDT; Deci and Ryan, 2002; Deci et al, 2017; Gagné and Deci, 2005) to predict how employee flexibility could vary in relation to the different work climates

  • In a preliminary principal component analysis (PCA) that we conducted on the data, we found this item loaded onto a different factor than the other mastery goal orientation (MGO) items when we included them together with items measuring performance goal orientation (PGO), which we do not include in the article

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Summary

Introduction

Flexible employees who can quickly acquire new skills and effectively adapt to changing work demands are valuable resources in business environments characterized by change and uncertainty (Beltrán-Martín and Roca-Puig, 2013; Camps et al, 2016). Flexible employees enable firms to pursue different strategic alternatives and develop the innovation needed to create new business opportunities, enabling adaptation in line with the dynamic environment (Bhattacharya et al, 2005; Wright and Snell, 1998). Research on employee flexibility has primarily focused on the influence HRM practices have on this important outcome and has been carried out in larger firms where HRM practices are in place. The value of employee flexibility is amplified in smalland medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) (Mesu et al, 2013) that do not often have the resources needed to implement HRM practices (Whyman and Petrescu, 2015). Understanding what influences employee flexibility in this context is important, for expanding the existing literature on the topic, and for supporting the world’s economy and society

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