The Influence Of Leaders’ Being Made Friends By Subordinates For Business/Private Affairs On Leaders’ Ambidexterity

According to a survey report released by ADP in 2020,compared with other Asia-Pacific regions,every week,Chinese leaders face more than half of their subordinates confiding in them about various work problems arising from business or trivial life chores caused by private affairs,so that there will be a wide range of relationships between them and their subordinates for different purposes of making friends for business or private purposes.Therefore,the issue of leaders being made friends by their subordinates is quite common.However,although Confucianism has put forward the leadership realm of "using friends to dominate" as early as in the book "Zeng Zi",it is not difficult to find in management practice that some leaders often try to avoid the upward friendship of their subordinates.It can be seen that when faced with the behavior of subordinates making friends,leaders often have a one-sided understanding,and this one-sided understanding will lead to the friendship between leaders and subordinates cannot play the positive role that it should play.From this,it is known that it is of great practical significance for leaders to explore the internal mechanism of leaders being made friends by their subordinates for business or personal reasons,and then guide them to effectively deal with and view the behavior and situation in practice.This paper defines the concept----the leader being made friends by his subordinates for public/private affairs: in the workplace,the leader is asked by the subordinates who hope to form a friendship relationship with the leader to actively confide in and communicate public/private affairs.Leaders being made friends by his subordinates because of public/private affairs are not unique in previous research,and are often classified in researches in the fields of workplace friendship and ingratiation.In the relevant social and organizational theories,the leaders being made friends by subordinates for public/private affairs are considered to be the external situation that the leader needs to face,and the leader’s situation will be extremely important to the leader ’s psychological state and behavior.Based on the CAPS theory,this paper deeply analyzes the influence mechanism and contingency situation of the leaders being made friends by subordinates for public/private affairs on the leaders ’ ambidexterity.Based on the CAPS theory,we believe that in a team,the leaders being made friends by subordinates for public/private affairs constitute the leader’s external situational characteristics.The information it transmits has a certain uniqueness.The subordinates in the situation transmit the work information and emotional information to the leader,as well as social support,which will activate the unique cognitive-emotional unit in the leader’s individual system.At the same time,under certain circumstances,the coding unit actually determines the activation of the subsequent cognitive emotional unit,so the external situational information in which the leader is located will sometimes be processed by the coding unit before activating a specific emotional unit rather than directly activating it.Furthermore,the CAPS theory holds that the resulting behavior is directly triggered by the individual ’ s psychological state and belief,so the activation of the leader ’ s cognitive-emotional unit will lead to the leader’s specific responsive behavior to external situations.Therefore,the CAPS theory provides a theoretical basis for us to explain the contingency mechanism of the leader’s cognitive-affective unit in the process of the leader being influenced by the subordinate’s business or personal friendship.We selected 115 leaders and all their 527 direct subordinates for empirical test,and the results show that: Leaders’ made friends by their subordinates for business has a positive impact on Leaders’ Ambidexterity;Leaders’ being made friends by their subordinates for business/private affairs can enhance Leaders’ Ambidexterity by improving the work psychological safety,so the work psychological safety of leaders plays an intermediary role in this process.In addition,when a leader faced his subordinates’ making friends for private affairs,high level of Use of Emotions(UOE)will push him misunderstand the behavior,which will weaken the generation of work psychological safety,so the leader’s ability of Use of Emotions(UOE)plays a mediating role.This research theoretically defines and measures the concept of the leaders being made friends by subordinates for public/private affairs,which is different from previous research,and analyzes the influence mechanism and contingency situation of the leaders being made friends by subordinates for public/private affairs on Leaders’ Ambidexterity.It provides a new theoretical framework and measurement tools for follow-up research;in practice,it also provides specific guidance for leaders on how to face,view and deal with leaders being made friends by their subordinates in public or private.