Servant leadership and employee outcomes: the moderating role of subordinates’ motives

Drawing from implicit leadership theories we advance servant leadership theory by examining moderating mechanisms that explain under what conditions servant leader behaviours impact followers in organizations. Specifically, we focused on the moderating role of subordinates’ motivational orientations—prosocial values or impression management motives—in relationships between servant leadership behaviours and job satisfaction, as well as subordinate organizational citizenship behaviours (OCBs). Using time-lagged data collected from 192 supervisor-subordinate dyads, we found that servant leadership was positively associated with employees’ job satisfaction, but not significantly related to their performance of OCBs. We also found evidence that subordinates’ motives moderate the relationships between servant leadership and outcomes. Specifically, employees high on impression management experienced lower levels of job satisfaction than their lower scoring counterparts. Our findings suggest that servant leadership may not be equally beneficial for all followers. We discuss implications for theory and practice.     

Analysis of factors affecting drivers’ choice to engage with a mobile phone while driving in Beijing

In the current work, we examined reasons that drivers choose to engage with a mobile phone while driving in Beijing. An Internet survey was administered to collect data about talking and texting while driving. Conversations were sorted into different types. Respondents were requested to indicate the frequency of initiating a call or text, perceived risk, perceived importance and emotionality of the call or text. A structural equation model of talking and texting while driving was developed with perceived risk, perceived importance and emotionality of the call as predictors and compared to a similar model with U.S. drivers. Unlike the U.S. data, perceived risk has a significant negative impact on the choice to call or text among drivers in Beijing. Results also show that perceived importance of the call is a major factor affecting the usage of phone while driving. Even though drivers know it is dangerous and illegal, Beijing drivers choose to talk on mobile phones while driving, but they prefer not to text.     

Do People Use Their Implicit Theories of Creativity as General Theories?

This study examines whether people use the general implicit theories of creativity or not when applying them to themselves and others. On the basis of the actor–observer asymmetry theory, the authors propose that conception of creativity would be differently constructed depending on the targets of attention: general, self, and other. Three studies attempted to examine this hypothesis. In the preliminary study, a measure was developed to assess the characteristics that describe general creativity. In Study 1, exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses found the conceptual factors of general creativity. In Study 2, the common and specific factors of general, self, and others’ creativity concepts were compared through invariance tests. As a result, it was revealed that the invariance test failed, which means that the general conception of creativity may not be applicable to monitor self and others’ creativity in a consistent way. Implications and limitations of this study are discussed at the end of the study.