Abstract
In the view of complexity theory, the emergency behavior of individual is nonlinear and influenced not only by individual variables but also by many other environmental variables. Based on complexity perspective, this article explored why employees’ taking charge behavior occurs in organizations from a multilevel approach. Specifically, this study has explored the cross-level interactive effect of organization-level factor (organizational justice climate and psychological safety climate) and individual-level factor (organizational identification) on employees’ taking charge behavior. Using a total of 806 valid matching questionnaires from 91 firms in China, this study found that first, organizational identification is positively related with employees’ taking charge behavior. Second, distributive justice climate positively moderates the influence of organizational identification on employees’ taking charge behavior. Third, psychological safety climate negatively moderates the influence of organizational identification on employees’ taking charge behavior. According to our results, organizational policies and practices should be made to foster employees’ identification with the organization, to construct a fair environment within the organization, and to convince employees that taking charge behavior will not entail political risks, especially for those employees with low organizational identification.
Highlights
Organizations are complex adaptive systems in which organizational culture and climate promote the interactions among individuals, teams, and groups, and in turn the ideas, attitudes, and adaptive behaviors emerge from those interactions of their members [1, 2]
Organizational researchers have seldom used multilevel analysis to achieve a bigger picture of organizational dynamics, which results in an incomplete understanding of multilevel interactions and their consequences [3]
A few cross-level studies demonstrate that justice climate has incremental validity in predicting individual-level attitudes and behavior beyond individual-level justice perceptions [28, 31]. These studies focus more on the impact of organizational justice on affiliative extra-role behaviors, and few studies explore whether employees who are treated fairly have the motivation to perform challenging extra-role behaviors [11]. erefore, this study will fill in this gap by exploring the cross-level impact of organizational justice climate on taking charge behavior. is is the second theoretical contribution of this study
Summary
Organizations are complex adaptive systems in which organizational culture and climate promote the interactions among individuals, teams, and groups, and in turn the ideas, attitudes, and adaptive behaviors emerge from those interactions of their members [1, 2]. Morrison and Phelps [8] have proposed another example of challenging extra-role behavior, namely, taking charge, which means individual employees dedicate voluntary and constructive efforts to effect organizationally functional change with respect to how work is executed within the contexts of their jobs, work units, or organizations. They are both challenging extra-role behaviors, taking charge behavior is different from voice behavior. The researchers above have tended to focus on either personal or situational predictors, respectively, and they rarely explore the interactive effect of both influencers on employees’ taking charge behavior.
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