The Influence Of Employee Categorization Criteria On Overall Justice And Employee Turnover Intention

Differential leadership is a leadership style that emerges from local Chinese culture.It refers to the fact that leaders will divide subordinates into "insiders" and "outsiders" and display favoritism toward the in-group members rather than the out-group members in Chinese organizations.They provide more care communication,promotion rewards and tolerance for making mistakes to in-group members.Existing studies have different views on the effectiveness of differential leadership.On the one hand,differential leadership is conducive to motivate employees,thereby enhancing team performance.On the other hand,differential leadership can lead to relational behavior,make employees feel unfair and deprived,and then trigger team conflicts.One of the important reasons for the inconsistencies in the above conclusions is that no attention has been paid to different categorization criteria for differential treatment.So,the study intends to compensate for the deficiencies of the relevant research.According equity theory,this study focused on the impact of employee classification criteria of guanxi(corporate leaders treat their employees according to the degree of kinship),loyalty(corporate leaders treat their employees according to the degree of loyalty)and competence(corporate leaders treat their employees according to the degree of completing their assignments)on employees’ psychology and behavior under differential leadership.The study collected data on 227 employees in 48 teams of 8companies such as Wuhan and Guiyang and tested the impact of employee classification criteria(guanxi 、 loyalty and competence)on employees turnover intention through overall justice.We also probed into the moderating effect of classification criteria guanxi and competence on classification criteria loyalty for testing how to reduce the negative effects of classification criteria loyalty.The results of empirical research showed that:First,classification criteria loyalty negatively related to overall justice,and the positive effect of classification criteria guanxi and classification criteria competence on overall justice was not significant.Second,overall justice had completely mediating effect between the classification criteria loyalty and employee turnover intention.Third,classification criteria guanxi and competencene negatively moderated classification criteria loyalty and overall justice,and the relationship between classification criteria loyalty on overall justice was more negative when the leader did not value classification criteria guanxi and competence.Classification criteria guanxi and competence moderated the mediating effect of overall justice on classification criteria loyalty and employee turnover intention: the mediating effect of overall justice on classification criteria loyalty and employee turnover intention was stronger when when the leader did not value classification criteria guanxi and competence.On this basis,this study puts forward suggestions and practical enlightenment on how to enhance overall justice and reduce turnover intention of employees when leaders in the Chinese context uses the differential leadership,which provides new ideas for analyzing the effectiveness of differential order leadership.