The Influence Of Self-Sacrificial Leadership On Subordinate's Work Engagement: A Cross-Level Study Under The Condition Of Organizational Crisis

Self-sacrificial leadership refers to a leadership style that the leader voluntarily implements for the goals of the organization or team and makes his or her own gains or interests suffer losses.In the competitive and dangerous modern business environment,self-sacrificial leadership is gradually becoming an effective way to lead the organization out of the predicament.As a new leadership after charismatic leadership and transformational leadership,self-sacrificial leadership has attracted the extensive attention from Chinese and western scholars.This study explores the influence of self-sacrificial leadership on the work engagement of subordinates' vigor,dedication and absorption,and constructs a cross-level moderated mediating model which is regulated by subordinates' identification with leader as individuallevel mediator and organizational crisis as organizational-level moderator.Besides,collecting the questionnaire data of 371 employee from 24 enterprises and using statistical software of SPSS24.0 and Mplus7.4 to test it.This study has made innovations in the theoretical model and data processing methods,which has certain theoretical contributions and practical values.In particular,this study does not discuss the major organizational crises in the fields of public relations,sociology and communications,but focuses on the more common general organizational crisis in the daily business administration.This study defines the organizational crisis as an unstable and tense state for a long time.The empirical results show that:(1)Self-sacrificial leadership has a significant positive impact on work engagement and its three sub dimensions of vigor,dedication and absorption.(2)Self-sacrificial leadership has a significant positive impact on subordinates' identification with their leader.(3)Subordinates' identification with their leader has a significant positive impact on work engagement and three sub dimensions of it,including vigor,dedication and absorption.(4)Subordinates' identification with their leader plays a partial mediating role between self-sacrificial leadership and work engagement,as well as three sub dimensions of the latter including vigor,dedication and absorption.(5)The organizational crisis has a moderating effect between self-sacrificial leadership and subordinates' identification with their leader.In the context of high organization crisis,the positive impact of high self-sacrificial leadership on subordinates' identification with their leader is stronger than that in low organizational crisis,and the positive impact of low self-sacrificial leadership on subordinates' identification with their leader is worse than that in low organizational crisis.And it is the opposite in the context of low organization crisis.(6)The organizational crisis moderates the mediating effect of subordinates' identification with their leader between self-sacrificial leadership and work engagement,as well as three sub dimensions of the latter including vigor,dedication and absorption.When the degree of organizational crisis is high,the mediating effect of subordinates' identification with their leader is stronger;and vice versa.