The Study On The Mechanism Of Positive Leadership On Employee Engagement

Chinese business environment varies from minute to minute, therefore, it is necessary for leaders to anticipate problems, to make creative decisions, and to create more positive climates. People generally believe that positive leadership is one of the key factors for the success of individuals and organizations. Several leadership theories have also examined the positive aspects of leadership styles or behaviors. However, more direct theory and research on the effects of positive leadership traits and styles are rare. Through literature review on the positive leadership, work engagement, self-determination and positive affect, we found that the extant research had the following deficiencies:First, there was a lack of the integrated framework about the effect of leadership behavior on employee engagement; Second, the mechanism of leadership behavior on employee engagement was not thorough; Third, there still lacked effective intervention measures for developing positive leadership behaviors to promote employee engagement.On the basis of job demands-resources model, this study analyzed the nature of employee engagement; Combining with the dynamic relationship between positive leadership and employee engagement, this study integrated the self-determination theory and the emotional contagion theory, and constructed the model about the effect of positive leadership on employee engagement as theoretical framework. This model suggests that, positive leadership brings job resources for employees; The employees respond to the resources through two paths:one path is driven by cognition, when employees are faced with positive leadership behavior, they will evaluate whether their basic psychological needs are fulfilled, so as to determine their engagement; the other path is driven by emotion, when employees are met with positive leadership behaviors of their supervisors, infected by the positive behaviors, they will demonstrate more positive affect, so as to promote their work engagement.In order to test the model about the relationship between positive leadership and employee engagement, two empirical studies were conducted to investigate the influence degree and mechanism of positive leadership on employee engagement. The two studies both took enterprise employees as research object. Study one tested the first path through which positive leadership impacted on employee engagement, namely cognition-driven path. The samples of this study are from supervisors and employees in enterprises of Eastern China. By interview, open questionnaire and a two-stage questionnaire investigation for2months,288valid supervisor-subordinate paired data of63teams were obtained, to inspect the effect of positive leadership on employee engagement, and examine the mediating role of need fulfilment and moderating effect of proactive personality. In this study, positive leadership was considered as a variable on the team level, belonging to the context variable, thus multilevel analysis was adopted. Data analysis was made through hierarchical linear model (HLM). The results indicated that positive leadership was positively related to employees’need fulfilment and work engagement. In addition, the results also showed that need fulfilment partially mediated the relationship between positive leadership and employee engagement. Furthermore, conditional indirect effect test showed that the mediating effect of need fulfilment on the positive leadership-employee engagement linkage was significant only among employees who had low levels of proactive personality. Most of the hypotheses were supported.Study two tested the second path by which positive leadership impacted on employee engagement, namely emotion-driven path. This study took the employees of the enterprises in Central China as research samples, to investigate the effects of positive leadership and employee state positive affect on engagement, and to examine the mediating role of state positive affect and moderating effects of sensitivity to positive affect and collectivism. Through the two stages of data collection for a period of2months,297employees of60teams completed the survey in two stages, received a total of215valid data of48teams. Through the analysis of HLM, we validated the positive effect of positive leadership on employee engagement once again; State positive affect partially mediated the relationship between positive leadership and employee engagement; Collectivism had a significant negative moderating effect between positive leadership and employee state positive affect.Based on the two empirical studies, this paper put forward strategies of developing positive leadership to promote employee engagement. Positive leadership behaviors are the external resources for employees, and psychological need satisfaction and state positive affect are internal resources of the individuals. In practice, enterprises can develop the external resources to strengthen internal resources, so as to promote the positive effect of positive leadership on employee engagement. In particular, positive leadership is the core competitive advantage of an organization. It is dynamic, culturable and developable. Therefore, it is feasible to construct the positive leadership model on the team level, based on the theory of group dynamics.