| In the practice of business management,the increasing emergence of contradictions in dynamic market circumstance has threatened the survival and development of the organizations.Under this situation,it is difficult to deal with the increasing complex contradictions if following the single leadership style merely,for the reason that the traditional leadership style has overemphasized the allocation rule of “zero-sum” and the trade-offs of organizational resources.Therefore,the practice of business management has called for the ambidexterity of leaders(i.e.ambidextrous leadership).More specifically,ambidextrous leadership refers to leaders coordinate and integrate multiple conflicts through the complex cognition framework and guide of action under the control of paradoxical thinking,in order to achieve the purpose of dynamic balance of paradoxical forces and to meet the needs of synergistic development of the opposing forces.Scholars have realized that exploring the influences of different leadership styles separately following the research paradigm of single leadership style will lead to the deviation between the theoretical research and practical research,which cannot succeed in guiding the concrete practice of business management.Hence,as an emerging leadership style,ambidextrous leadership has been devoted to increasing attention from both scholars and practitioners.Previous studies have paid a great deal of attention to exploring the positive impact of ambidextrous leadership.For instance,most of the prior research has focused on the positive impact of ambidextrous leadership on creativity and innovation at different levels in the workplace.Some scholars have empirically verified the positive relationship between ambidextrous leadership and the positive work behaviors of employees.However,the negative consequences of ambidextrous leadership have been neglected.Just as the saying goes,every coin has two sides.While ambidextrous leadership brings a lot of positive outcomes,there may be some adverse effects at the same time.That is,ambidextrous leadership may have a dark side.Thus,it is necessary to keep a keen on this question of how,when and why ambidextrous leadership exerts a negative influence on employees' behaviors and performance in the workplace,which can further provide guidance for the managers to take ambidextrous leadership style as one management tool effectively as well as successfully.Based on the cognitive-affective personality system(CAPS)theory,the present article integrates the research of ambidextrous leadership(independent variable),cognitive strain(mediating variable),vitality at work(mediating variable),and individual traditionality(moderating variable),which develops an integrated model based the dual-path of cognition and affect.In other words,the current study aims to explore the mechanism of how ambidextrous leadership influences employees' work alienation from both the cognition and affect perspective.Moreover,we add one of the Chinese workers' traits,i.e.,individual traditionality,to our model to explore the different impact of personal traits on the dual paths.Employing a two-wave questionnaire survey,267 valid data were obtained from front-line employees of a car rental service company located in Shanghai.Using the software of SPSS 20.0 and MPLUS 7.4,we conducted a series of data analyses to test our hypotheses(i.e.main effect,mediating effect,and moderating effect),including the descriptive statistics and correlation analysis,explore factor analysis,reliability and validity analysis,common method bias,path analysis,hierarchical regression,and bootstrapping analysis.The results show that:(1)ambidextrous leadership was not significantly associated with employees' work alienation;(2)there was a significant multiple mediation effects of employees' cognitive strain and vitality at work in the mechanism linking ambidextrous leadership and employees' work alienation;(3)with respect to cognition process,ambidextrous leadership increased employees' cognitive strain and consequently work alienation;(4)with respect to affect process,ambidextrous leadership could enhance employees' vitality at work,which in turn diminished employees' work alienation;(5)affective path exerted an important effect on cognition path,employees' vitality at work and cognitive strain played a chain mediating effect on the linkage between ambidextrous leadership and employees' work alienation.More specifically,ambidextrous leadership reduced employees' cognitive strain through the promotion of employees' vitality at work,and then influenced employees' work alienation;(6)traditionality moderated the relationship between ambidextrous leadership and employees' vitality at work,such that the relationship was stronger under low traditionality than under high.However,traditionality had no moderating effect on the ambidextrous leadership-employees' cognitive strain association.With these findings,the presented study makes four identifiable theoretical contributions:(1)Extending the research concerning the influence of ambidextrous leadership.Taking from the perspective of “the negative influence of ambidextrous leadership on employees in the workplace”,we selected the representative variable of negative working states,i.e.work alienation,as dependent variable,which provided empirical evidence that ambidextrous leadership originating from the field of innovation can also predict employees' work behaviors and performance beyond creativity and innovation.Therefore,we enrich the ambidextrous leadership literature by adding the consequence of ambidextrous leadership,namely work alienation.Furthermore,we extend the understanding of the potential negative impact of ambidextrous leadership by examining the ambidextrous leadership-work alienation association.(2)Extending the research relating the antecedents of work alienation.Though prior research has explored how individual attributes,job characteristics,national culture,and other factors may exert influence on employees' work alienation,the crucial role of situational factors(e.g.leadership style)have been ignored.Thus,the presented paper linked the literature of leadership style with work alienation and identified ambidextrous leadership as a predictor of employees' work alienation,which enriches the research regarding the formation mechanism of work alienation from the perspective of leadership style.(3)Expanding the research on the mediating mechanism of ambidextrous leadership.Previous studies have mainly focused on the vital role of cognition,one proximal dependent variable,on the relation between ambidextrous leadership and the remote outcomes,however,the crucial role of employees' affect has been left unexplored.Drawing upon CAPS theory,this study integrated cognition and affect into personality system to examine the underlying mechanism linking ambidextrous leadership and work alienation from the perspective of cognition and affection.In particular,we founded the chain mediation effects of cognition(cognitive strain)and affection(vitality at work),which expands the research concerning the mediating mechanism of ambidextrous leadership,as well as provides a comprehensive analysis and systematical explanatory framework for the future research on the impacts of ambidextrous leadership.(4)Extending the research on the moderating mechanism of ambidextrous leadership.Previous studies have mainly emphasized the moderating effects of situational factors such as environmental uncertainty,dynamics,and competitiveness on the relations between ambidextrous leadership and its consequences.However,we still know little about the moderating roles of personality traits.The current study chose individual traditionality,one typical Chinese workers' trait,as one crucial boundary condition underlying the influencing process of ambidextrous leadership.More specifically,we focused on the moderating role of individual traditionality in the links between ambidextrous leadership and dual paths(i.e.cognitive strain and vitality at work).By doing so,we provide a better and deep understanding of when and why ambidextrous leadership can exert an effect on employees' work alienation. |
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