Employees' Information Seeking:the Antecedents And Mechanisms

Employees' information seeking behaviors were once considered as an useful means for improving their competence and performance,whereas,under the circumstances of enhanced organizational bureaucracy,such behaviors sometimes were more likely to be reactive and negative other than proactive and positive.So far this issue has received little attention and few empirical research were addressed on it.Previous studies mainly focused on the contents of information seeking,however,the impacts of organizational antecedents and related individual variables on information seeking behaviors were explored inadequately.On the basis of systematical analyses on published documents in this field,this study constructed a dual-moderating mediated model,i.e.,organizational bureaucracy indirectly impacts employees ' information seeking behaviors through the mediation of power motivation.In this model,the first half path of mediation(i.e.,organizational bureaucracy ? power motivation)is moderated by victim sensitivity and,for the second half path of mediation(i.e.,power motivation?information seeking)is moderated by perceptions oforganizationalpolitics.By collecting sampledatafrom government and enterprises' employees,the research examines theoretical model by exploited the methods of moderatedmediationmodelanalyses,theresultsindicatedthat:(1)The organizational bureaucracy positively predict employees' information seekingbehaviors;(2)The employees' power motivation partially mediate the relation between the organizationalbureaucracyandinformationseekingbehaviors;(3)The victim sensitivity moderates the relationship between bureaucratic and power motivation,i.e.,with the increase of the organizational bureaucracy,employees withhigherlevelofvictimsensitivityshowstrongerpowermotivation;(4)The direct effect of the organizational bureaucracy on information seeking is moderated by perceptions of organizational politics.However,when take power motivation as mediating variable,such direct moderating effect displaced by the indirect moderating effect(i.e.,perceptions of organizational politics moderated the relation between power motivation and information seeking),that is,with the increase of employees' power motivation,employees with higher level of perceptions of organizational politics display many more information seeking behaviors than that with lower level of perceptions of organizational politics.The results suggest that managers should pay more attention to employees' information seeking behaviors,improve organization communication and,meet employee's information needs by reducing organizational political events and management uncertainty.In the future,the connotations and latent mechanisms of employees' information seeking should be further explored under the background of Chinese organization.