A Study On The Influence Mechanism Of Differential Leadership On Employee Performance

With the successful experience of China's market economy reform being widely recognized in the world,the localized management practice in China and the localized management theory research in the context of Chinese culture have attracted extensive attention in the academic circle.Different from western leadership theory,Chinese localized leadership theory is deeply rooted in the context of Traditional Chinese culture,embodies the ethics of traditional Chinese Confucianism,and shows the difference order and internal and external behaviors in dealing with others.Starting from the cultural context and the practice of Chinese situational management,it has become one of the issues to be considered in the organization development to find and study the leadership style with Chinese management characteristics.Differential leadership is such a unique leadership style that is ubiquitous in Chinese organizations and reflects distinctive cultural characteristics.Preliminary exploration has been completed on the research,connotation definition and concept measurement of differential leadership.The existing research mainly explores the impact of differential leadership on employees' work behavior and organizational performance from the perspective of employees' perception of equity.It is still to be enriched to explore the influence mechanism of differential leadership from the personal cognition of employees.In addition,due to the lack of "in-groups/out-groups" perspective or the lack of empirical analysis and testing of "in-groups/out-groups" perspective,the existing research fails to deeply reveal the internal mechanism of differential leadership on employee behavior and performance.Based on the self-concept theory,the difference pattern theory and the "favor and face" theory,this study analyzes and expounds the mediating effect of organization-based self-esteem and the influence of the regulating effect of "in-groups" and "out-groups" on the difference leadership and employee task performance.This paper explores the moderating effect of "in-groups/out-groups" on the mechanism of differential leadership--organization-based self-esteem--employee task performance.This paper explores the influence of the three interactions of perceived supervisor status and differential leadership and "in-groups/out-groups" on organization-based self-esteem.Finally,all the hypotheses are summarized and integrated,and the theoretical model is proposed.Based on the field survey data of employees in enterprises and institutions in Linxia Hui autonomous prefecture,Gansu province,this study collected and sorted out 359 valid questionnaires.Using statistical software SPSS25.0 and Mplus7.4,the hypothesis was empirically verified through regression analysis,Bootstrapping and other statistical methods.The results showed that differential leadership positively affected employee task performance.Differential leadership has a positive effect on employees' organization-based self-esteem.Organization-based self-esteem plays a mediating role between differential leadership and task performance."In-groups/out-groups" moderated the relationship between the differential leadership and the organization-based self-esteem of employees.Compared with "out-groups",the more "in-groups" belong to,the stronger relationship between differential leadership and organization-based self-esteem will be.The interaction between perceived supervisor status and differential leadership and "in-groups/out-groups" on organization-based self-esteem was established.When subordinates of "in-groups" with high perceived supervisor status felt that the leaders in the organization showed a relatively high differential leadership style,their organization-based self-esteem would also be improved accordingly.The research enriches the boundary conditions of existing researches on differential leadership,reveals the internal mechanism of organization-based self-esteem,"in-groups/out-groups",and the influence of perceived supervisor status on employee performance,further deepens the local management practice,and improves the depth of China's local management theory.