Abstract
Taking charge is an important form of proactive behavior that sustains organizational survival and individual development. Learning how to motivate employees to engage in taking-charge behavior has become one of the hot topics in the field of organizational management. Despite considerable research investigating the factors influencing taking charge, less attention has been paid to leadership-related factors, such as inclusive leadership. Based on the self-determination theory and the social information processing theory, we examined the mediating roles of psychological safety and thriving at work in the relationship between inclusive leadership and taking-charge behavior. We collected data in two stages from 205 pairs of employees and their supervisors at 17 companies in mainland China. Specifically, the results revealed that inclusive leadership promoted employees’ taking-charge behavior first through psychological safety and then through thriving at work. The results describe a more detailed mechanism underlying the formation of taking-charge behavior. The results further deepen our understanding of the path from inclusive leadership to employee behavior. These findings have theoretical implications for the taking-charge literature and managerial implications for practitioners.
Highlights
In a dynamic, complex, vague, and uncertain environment, many organizations are decentralizing and beginning to redefine employee work roles
As some measures are self-reported, we evaluated the impact of common method bias, which is highly problematic if a single latent factor accounts for the majority of the manifest variables’ variance
The analyses reported above show that psychological safety mediated the relationship between inclusive leadership and thriving at work and that thriving at work mediated the relationship between inclusive leadership and taking-charge behavior
Summary
Complex, vague, and uncertain environment, many organizations are decentralizing and beginning to redefine employee work roles. In an increasingly dynamic and changing context, companies require employees to efficiently perform tasks within their roles and expect them to respond to challenges and engage in more proactive behaviors to build the core competitiveness of the organization. Taking charge is the constructive effort of employees to initiate self-improvement, improve organizational operations, and promote functional changes in the organization (Morrison and Phelps, 1999). Parker and Collins (2010) note that employee proactive behavior includes taking-charge behavior, speaking up, problem prevention, and personal innovation. Studies have shown that taking-charge behaviors based on workflow or method improvement can enhance organizational adaptability and long-term viability (Moon et al, 2008; Parker and Collins, 2010). Employees’ taking-charge behavior enables better performance evaluation, job satisfaction, and affective commitment
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