Development Of Guanxi-ability Balancing Behavior And Its Effect On Leader's Status

Confucian relationalism,paying attention to the importance of renqin and guanxi,lays a certain social and cultural foundation for the legitimacy of credible leadership behavior in Chinese context.In contrast,organizational justice theory highlights members' capability,suggesting supervisors should appoint people on merit.These two leadership behaviors,guanxi-oriented and ability-oriented,were treated as two opposing practice in existing studies.Meanwhile,researchers explored the influence on leader's effectiveness these two leadership behavior independently.They neglected that guanxi and merit are both key factors leaders need considering.Based on the weakness,we point out the advantages and disadvantages of these two thoughts through a dialectical analysis.According to Chinese traditional yinyang theory,we combined them organically and built a construct——guanxi-ability balancing behavior.It emphasizes the balance between guanxi and ability,which is common in the workplace.In order to describe the construct further,we developed the guanxi-ability balancing behavior scale,explored the effect on leader's status through two study.Through Induction and deduction?the validity of constructive content,exploratory factor analysis(EFA),and confirmatory factor analysis(CFA),first this study constructs guanxi-ability balancing behavior and scale.Based this,we approached the guanxi-ability balancing behavior's impact in leader's status,and we explored the mechanism and the boundary.The result shows a good reliability and validity of the scale.Model testing indicated that(1)guanxi-ability balancing behavior has a positive effect on supervisor's performance.And there are incredible validity after controlling guanxi-oriented and ability-oriented leadership behavior.(2)Guanxi-ability balancing behavior can influent leader's status by improve the performance.(3)Job complexity moderated the mediation effect: compared with high-complex job,when facing low-complex job,leader's guanxi-ability balancing behavior would have a better function.These results have significant practical meaning.First,it lays a ground for the legitimacy of guanxi-ability balancing behavior,and it would bring a more comprehensive understanding about guanxi and fairness.Meanwhile,our research about the relationship between guanxi-ability balancing behavior and leader's status offers a theoretical guidance for supervisor's maintaining and enhancing the status in organizations.