The Influence Mechanism Of Leadership Authorization On Employees' Feedback Seeking Behavior

The impact of leader behavior on employees' attitude and behavior has always been an important topic in the field of management psychology.However,few studies has examined the impact of differentiated leadership on employees' attitude and behavior in the past.So the present study combined leader behavior and differentiated leadership to explore the impact of their interaction on employees' attitude and behavior,in order to get a more complete conclusion.The research hypothesized that the interaction between leadership behavior and differentiated leadership behavior has positive impact on employees' feedback seeking behavior through two ways: positive(leader identification)and negative(role overload).The present study defined differentiated empowering leadership as an employee's perception related to the extent to which a leader exhibits varying levels of empowering behavior towards different followers,so as to use subjective measurement of empolyees' reporting.The first research revised a differentiated empowering leadership scale on the basis of past studies.The result of EFA indicated that differentiated empowering leadership scale consisted of two dimensions,named as differentiated delegating authority and differentiated participative decision making respectively,and seven items.The result of CFA indicated that the two dimensions construct of differentiated empowering leadership displayed an acceptable fit and showed a good reliability and validity.The second research collected 388 valid questionnaires to verify the hypothesis model in the present study.The result indicated that 1)empowering leadership behavior has positive effect on negative and positive feedback seeking behavior;2)leader identification mediated the relationship between empowering leadership behavior and positive,negative feedback seeking behavior;3)role overload did not mediate the relationship between empowering leadership behavior and positive,negative feedback seeking behavior;4)differentiated empowering leadership positively moderated the relationship between empowering leadership behavior and leader identification.Specifically,the positive impact of empowering leadership behavior on leader identification will be more(less)positive when followersperceived their leaders to be high(low)on differentiated empowering leadership;5)differentiated empowering leadership positively moderated the relationship between empowering leadership behavior and role overload.Specifically,empowering leadership behavior has positive(negative)impact on role overload when followers perceived their leaders to be high(low)on differentiated empowering leadership;6)differentiated empowering leadership positively moderated the indirect effect of empowering leadership behavior on feedback seeking behavior through leader identification;7)differentiated empowering leadership did not moderate the indirect effect of empowering leadership behavior on feedback seeking behavior through role overload.But,differentiated empowering leadership positively moderated the indirect effect of empowering leadership behavior on positive feedback seeking behavior through role overload.The present study simultaneously discussed the impact of leadership behavior and differentiated leadership on employees' attitude and behavior,which has certain theoretical and practical implications.The research deepened the understanding of the influence of differentiated empowerment behavior and empowerment behavior,and reminded managers to take leader identification and role overload into account when empowering.