Responsible school leadership and teacher work effort: the mediating roles of teacher identification and intrinsic motivation

Despite increasing research attention to teachers' emotional states, there remains a significant gap in understanding how educational leaders can effectively mitigate these issues. This study examined a multilevel, moderated mediation model that explored the relationship between responsible school leadership and emotional exhaustion, with the moderating role of teachers' proactive personality and the mediating effect of work meaningfulness. The study utilized data from 739 teachers working in 72 schools across Türkiye. Participants represented a range of school contexts and demographic backgrounds, allowing for examination of both individual and school-level effects. A multilevel analytical approach was employed to test the hypothesized moderated mediation model, examining both direct and indirect effects of responsible leadership on emotional exhaustion. The findings indicate that responsible leadership is directly associated with reduced emotional exhaustion and indirectly linked to lower exhaustion through increased work meaningfulness. Moreover, among teachers with higher levels of proactive personality, responsible leadership was associated with a stronger reduction in emotional exhaustion compared to those with lower levels of proactive personality. The findings contribute to the current literature by providing empirical evidence that the impact of leadership on teachers' emotional state is likely to vary across teachers with different personality traits.

This research revealed the process of increasing knowledge sharing in Chinese SMEs and suggested the way to improve knowledge sharing. As a factor that enhances knowledge sharing, it focused on responsible leadership. The main reason is that responsible leadership is emphasized as a key variable that leads organizational members' positive attitudes and behaviors toward their organization in the context of Chinese organizational culture. Although the importance of knowledge sharing and responsible leadership is being emphasized in Chinese SMEs, empirical studies verifying the causal relationship between responsible leadership and knowledge sharing are still insufficient. Based on such issues, this study attempted to clarify the causal relationship between responsible leadership and knowledge sharing. It also identified the mediating role of a positive working atmosphere in the process of inducing knowledge sharing. Furthermore, in relation to variables that can determine the level of knowledge sharing, the moderating role of psychological contract violation was identified. In order to verify the hypotheses, this study conducted a survey on employees who work in Chinese SMEs and used a total of 331 questionnaires for empirical analysis. It used measurements in previous research which were verified the validity to measure all variables and the empirical analysis included demographic analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, reliability analysis, correlation analysis, and regression analysis. The Hayes' SPSS PROCESS Macro 3.4 program and AMOS 24.0 program were used in this study. The results showed that responsible leadership had a significant positive influence on a positive work atmosphere and knowledge sharing. In addition, it was found that positive work atmosphere had a significant positive influence on members' knowledge sharing. Furthermore, it was verified that responsible leadership had a positive influence on knowledge sharing via positive job atmosphere.It concluded that positive job atmosphere was a mediation factor that lead to knowledge sharing. However, contrary to what was expected in this study, it was found that responsible leadership and positive working atmosphere were not associated with psychological contract violation. Furthermore, the moderating effect of psychological contract violation was found to be insignificant in the relationship between responsible leadership and positive working atmosphere. In general, previous researches have been verified that psychological contract violation is a negative variable that induces organizational members' negative attitudes and behaviors and such process reduces individual and organizational performance. However, the results of this study are different from those of previous researches. The results revealed another aspect of the role of contract violation in Chinese SMEs. Overall, this research presented a new research model for the process leading to knowledge sharing and contributed to expanding the research field of responsible leadership and knowledge sharing. Furthermore, theoretical and practical implications were presented via the results of this study and the future research directions were presented.

Responsible leadership is a key foundation in today's dynamic business world, where the call for ethical behaviour and innovation is louder than ever. Unlike traditional leadership paradigms, responsible leadership represents a multifaceted relationship and views leadership as a dynamic interplay between leaders and stakeholders, rather than a one-sided leader-follower dynamic. Based on this understanding, our study developed a conceptual framework for the relationship between accountable leadership and innovative work behaviors. It also identified mediating-moderating roles to better understand the linkages and gaps in the research. The conceptual framework was developed based on a literature search of 82 studies. The individual constructs of the model were analysed with the findings of other studies and the theoretical and practical contribution was identified through synthesis. In order to create a sustainable future, it is imperative that the pursuit of continuous innovation and the principles of responsible behaviour form the cornerstones of any society. Responsible leadership stimulates innovative work behaviour not only for the benefit of the organisation but also for the well-being of all stakeholders. This is essential to building the relationships and corporate culture that mediate this relationship. The moderator of this relationship is the moral intelligence of the responsible leader, which strengthens the relationship between responsible leadership and innovative work behaviour. The study contributes by providing a comprehensive review of the existing knowledge on responsible leadership and innovative work behavior. Furthermore, it enriches scholarly knowledge and offers practical insights into the characteristics desirable in CEOs to promote responsible and innovative business behavior.

PurposeLeaders are under increasing pressure to cultivate an engaged workforce in responsible ways, but how and when responsible leadership is related to employee work engagement remains unclear. Hence, this study aims to unfold the responsible leadership–work engagement relationship by exploring the mediating role of intrinsic corporate social responsibility (CSR) attributions and the moderating role of interactional justice.Design/methodology/approachA multiphase sample of 225 was collected from employees from the Chinese manufacturing industry. Hierarchical regression and PROCESS macro in SPSS were used to test the authors’ moderated mediation model.FindingsThe results demonstrate that responsible leadership is directly related to work engagement and indirectly related to it via employees' intrinsic CSR attributions. Interactional justice significantly strengthens the positive relationship between responsible leadership and intrinsic CSR attributions as well as the mediating effects of intrinsic CSR attributions.Practical implicationsTo cultivate an engaged workforce that improves organizational effectiveness, firms and managers should facilitate responsible leadership, signal sincere motives of CSR activities and enhance fair interpersonal treatment at work. These can also be helpful in various fields (e.g. promoting public trust).Originality/valueBased on social learning theory and attribution theory, this study empirically reveals the role of responsible leadership in enhancing work engagement. It sheds new light on the psychological mechanism and the boundary condition explaining how and when this linkage occurs, which advances research on responsible leadership and the individual-level analysis of CSR.

BackgroundIn today’s uncertain organizational environment, employee creativity has become the key driver of enterprise sustainability. Although previous studies have found the influence of responsible leadership on employee creativity, there remains a lack of study on how responsible leadership promotes employee creativity via intrinsic motivation mechanisms and what situational factors may moderate this process. This paper aims to construct a moderate-mediation model to examine the impact of responsible leadership and employee creativity through social cognitive theory and situational strength theory.Design/methodology/approachThe authors conducted a multi-source, time-lagged data collection between June and July 2023. At Time 1, subordinates assessed responsible leadership and psychological empowerment. At Time 2, conducted 4 weeks later, the same subordinates evaluated the leader’s encouragement of creativity and their employee creativity. In total, 1,126 participants completed both waves of data collection.FindingsThe results suggest that responsible leadership has a positive effect on both psychological empowerment and employee creativity. Moreover, psychological empowerment partially mediates the relationship between responsible leadership and employee creativity. The extent to which a leader promotes creativity can influence how responsible leadership and psychological empowerment contribute to employee creativity.ConclusionsThis study reveals the internal psychological mechanisms and situational boundaries through which responsible leadership influences employee creativity, thereby enriching the theoretical foundation of leadership and creativity research. The findings indicate that organizations should prioritize the development of responsible leadership, strengthening psychological empowerment mechanisms, and promoting a supportive, creative environment. This includes encouraging creativity, promoting fault-tolerant experimentation, and implementing recognition systems to fully unlock employees’ creative potential.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate the mediating effect of felt obligation for constructive change on the relationship between responsible leadership and organizational citizenship behavior for the environment (OCBE) in a China corporate environment, and this paper also analyze the moderated mediating effect of supervisor-subordinate guanxi on indirect relationship between responsible leadership and OCBE via felt obligation for constructive change.Design/methodology/approachThis paper used 380 employee samples to analyze the relationship between responsible leadership and OCBE. Hierarchical regression analyses and structural equation modeling was adopted to analyze the data.FindingsThe authors found that the felt obligation for constructive change plays a fully mediating role between responsible leadership and OCBE. The authors also found a positive interaction between responsible leadership and supervisor-subordinate guanxi on felt obligation for constructive change, and then the indirect effect of responsible leadership on OCBE via felt obligation for constructive change was stronger when employees perceived a high-level supervisor-subordinate guanxi.Research limitations/implicationsWhen responsible leadership stimulates employees to generate a high sense of constructive change, employees are more likely to engage in OCBE. This study provides evidence for cognitive evaluation theory. This study further demonstrated the importance of establishing high-quality supervisor-subordinate guanxi for responsible leaders and subordinates in China.Practical implicationsIn the management practice of the organization, the role of responsible leadership should be strengthened in terms of leadership development and, employee training and promotion, and high-quality supervisor-subordinate guanxi help to promote the effectiveness of responsible leadership.Originality/valueThis paper discusses how and when responsible leadership influences OCBE in a China corporate environment.

One of the problems that has become a serious challenge in the world of education is improving the quality of education in rural areas, which is disadvantaged, outermost, and frontier. Teachers’ intrinsic work motivation is an important indicator of the quality of the teachers’ work to bring out qualified performance. This study aimed to investigate the role of basic psychological needs satisfaction as the mediator between work climate and intrinsic work motivation of early childhood education teachers in rural areas. A total of one hundred and seven early childhood education teachers participated in this research by filling out questionnaires on organizational climate, basic psychological needs satisfaction, and interest or pleasure questionnaires from the intrinsic motivation inventory. Data analysis techniques used IBM SPSS 22 and Smart PLS 3. The results of the study reveal that the work climate is a factor that influences basic psychological needs satisfaction and intrinsic work motivation. Furthermore, the results of the study also show that basic psychological needs satisfaction affects the intrinsic work motivation of teachers and becomes a factor that mediates the role of work climate on the intrinsic work motivation of early childhood education teachers in rural areas. Optimizing the mediating role of basic psychological needs satisfaction can bring a more positive atmosphere for the teacher's work climate, increasing the teacher's teaching assignments and work motivation. The results also show that basic psychological needs satisfaction affects the intrinsic work motivation of teachers and serves as a factor that mediates the role of work climate on the intrinsic work motivation of early childhood teachers in rural areas

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.

Reward structures can have a significant impact on the performance of new product development (NPD) teams. However, there are several gaps in our understanding of how different types of extrinsic rewards influence the creative performance of NPD teams. Drawing on key theoretical objectives for advancing rewards‐creativity research in general, and NPD research in particular, this study incorporates a cognitive and behavioral view of rewards use. In so doing, we distinguish between three kinds of extrinsic rewards: financial, recognition, and social (based on their properties). We then draw upon self‐determination theory to hypothesize the differential effects of three types of extrinsic rewards on intrinsic task motivation, and subsequently the creative performance of NPD teams. The proposed framework is tested using two rounds of survey data from 238 members of 64 NPD teams in the high‐tech industry. Results of a multilevel structural equation modeling (MLSEM) analysis show that financial rewards have a negative relationship with intrinsic task motivation, while recognition and social rewards have a positive influence. Complexity of the product being developed not only helps to mitigate the negative effects of financial rewards on intrinsic task motivation, but it also reduces the positive effects of social rewards on intrinsic task motivation. Intrinsic task motivation is found to have a positive effect on NPD creative performance in terms of both the developed product’s degree of innovation and its quality. Theoretical and managerial implications are explored.

Purpose – While traditionally, the workplace primarily focused on fulfilling individuals' basic needs, there is a growing recognition of the importance of meeting psychological needs as well. Employees now desire well-being, satisfaction, and a sense of meaning in their work lives. Factors such as meaningful work, job resources, and leadership styles play a crucial role in fostering these positive experiences and influencing organizational commitment. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the impact of responsible leadership and meaningful work on work engagement among female employees in the automotive sector within the Ankara Organized Industrial Zone (OSTİM). Specifically, the study will examine the direct effects of responsible leadership on work engagement and the mediating role of meaningful work in this relationship. This focus on responsible leadership stems from its increasing recognition as a critical aspect of responsible leadership that considers the needs of various stakeholders while promoting individual and organizational well-being. Design/methodology/approach – This research was conducted in Ankara Organized Industrial Zone (OSTIM) in Turkiye with a sample of 242 people. Findings – It was concluded that responsible leadership positively impacts work engagement and that meaningful work mediates this relationship. Discussion – This study examined the impact of responsible leadership on work engagement, with a specific focus on the mediating role of meaningful work, among female employees in the automotive sector within the Ankara Organized Industrial Zone (OSTİM). The findings indicated a significant positive relationship between responsible leadership and work engagement, and further revealed that meaningful work partially mediated this relationship. These results offer valuable theoretical contributions and practical implications for organizations and managers.

Drawing on the conservation of resources theory (COR), this study examines the relationship between responsible leadership and counterproductive work behavior of employee cyberloafing. Incorporating related concepts of felt obligation, job stress, and conscientiousness as possible mediators and moderators between responsible leadership and cyberloafing, a field study and a quasi‐experimental design were conducted on two data sets. Data from Study 1 showed that while responsible leadership reduced employee cyberloafing through increased felt obligation, it also promoted employee cyberloafing through increasing job stress. Study 2 further showed that conscientiousness moderated the mediating effect of felt obligation between responsible leadership and cyberloafing. The results from this work illustrate the paradoxical mechanisms of self‐regulatory resources anticipated from COR.

The aim of this research is to analyze how much influence democratic leadership style, intrinsic motivation and work discipline have on individual employee performance. This research was conducted at PT. Pangansari Utama Food Industry East Jakarta. This research data uses primary data in the form of a questionnaire to 100 respondents at PT. Pangansari Utama Food Industry using the multiple linear regression method which was processed using SPSS 17.0 software. The research results show in partial testing the influence of democratic leadership style, intrinsic motivation and work discipline on employee performance. Between Democratic Leadership Style (X1), Intrinsic Motivation (X2) and Work Discipline (X3) on Employee Performance (Y) shows a positive and significant influence. This shows that the three independent variables, namely democratic leadership style, intrinsic motivation and work discipline have influenced Y. The determination test result is 0.608, this shows that the variables democratic leadership style, intrinsic motivation and work discipline contribute 60.8% to the employees’ performance of PT Pangansari Utama Food Industry. This shows that there are still other factors that account for 39.2% of employee performance. The magnitude of this influence is PT. Pangansari Utama Food Industry East Jakarta must pay more attention to democratic leadership style, intrinsic motivation and work discipline to improve the employees’ performance of PT. Pangansari Utama Food Industry East Jakarta.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to conceptualize social leader-member exchange (SLMX) and economic leader-member exchange (ELMX) as two separate dimensions of leader-member exchange, and examines how intrinsic work motivation moderates their relationship with follower work effort. Design/methodology/approach – Data were obtained from 352 employee-leader dyads from the public health sector in Norway (response rate=61.9 percent). Hierarchical linear modeling was used to test the relationship between subordinate rated SLMX and ELMX relationships and leader ratings of work effort. Findings – This study replicates prior research showing that SLMX is positively related and ELMX negatively related to followers’ work effort. A significant interaction between SLMX and intrinsic motivation is also revealed, suggesting that SLMX relationships are important with respect to work effort for followers who exhibit lower levels of intrinsic work motivation. Research limitations/implications – The data were cross-sectional, thus prohibiting causal inferences. Practical implications – SLMX relationships may be particularly important for the work effort of followers low in intrinsic motivation. Leaders may draw on this finding and seek to aid the development of the relationship by means of relationship-oriented behaviors. Originality/value – Given the importance of maximizing the performance of all the followers, a better understanding of the conditions under which SLMX and ELMX relationships relate to work effort is particularly important. The present study advances knowledge on SLMX and ELMX relationships by demonstrating how intrinsic motivation moderates how SLMX and ELMX relationships relate to follower work effort.

The present study extends the meaningful work and ethics literature by comparing three ethics-related antecedents. The second contribution of this paper is that in using a multi-dimensional MFW construct we offer a more fine-tuned understanding of the impact of ethical antecedents on different dimensions of MFW, such as expressing full potential and integrity with self. Using an international data set from 879 employees and structural equation modelling, we confirmed an updated seven-dimension Comprehensive Meaningful Work Scale (CMWS). The structural model found that fairness, responsible leadership and worthy work are all significant and positively related to the majority of meaningfulness dimensions. However, different antecedents are related to different dimensions of MFW, showing that a complex and multi-level combination of ethics-related practices are required to cultivate MFW. All relationships were in the expected positive direction except responsible leadership, which was negatively related to the MFW dimension of integrity with self. Across the seven dimensions of MFW, only the dimension ‘Service to Others’ was uniformly not predicted by any antecedent. However, all three antecedents significantly related to important dimensions of MFW not usually measured in the ethics literature, such as ‘Unity with Others’ and ‘Expressing Full Potential’. In addition, we conducted dominance analysis to test the relative importance of the three antecedent across the MFW dimensions, and found that worthy work is the most dominant antecedent, although all three antecedents are the most dominant for at least one MFW dimension—further highlighting the importance of exploring MFW as a multi-dimensional construct. We discuss the implications for MFW theory and practice.

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