Research Of The Influence Mechanism Of Participative Leadership On Employee Exploration-Exploitation Learning

With the rapid development of information technology and network technology,the industrial economy times is quickly changing to the knowledge economy times.The organizational environment becomes more and more dynamic,uncertain and unpredictable.Organizations must learn constantly to adapt to the complex external environment.Exploration learning enables enterprises to meet the challenges in the future,while exploitation learning enables enterprises to create value in the short term.Therefore,exploring the influence mechanism of exploration learning and exploitation learning at the same time is very important for enterprises to maintain long-term competitive advantage.Leadership plays an important role in the continuous learning process of employees.Participative leadership encourages employees to take part in decision-making and solve work issues together,which has become a leadership style that has attracted much attention in recent years.This study will explore the interaction mechanism and boundary conditions between participative leadership and employees’ exploration learning and exploitation learning.Based on the review of previous literatures,this study establishes a research model of participative leadership,self-reflection,exploration learning,exploitation learning and psychological capital,which is on the basis of social cognitive theory.This study adopts questionnaire investigation method,and 402 valid questionnaires were finally collected.After analyzing and sorting out the collected data and verifying the proposed hypothesis,the following conclusions were drawn:(1)Participative leadership has a significant positive influence on employees’ exploration learning,exploitation learning and self-reflection,and self-reflection can positively influence exploration learning and exploitation learning;(2)Participative leadership can influence employees’ exploration learning and exploitation learning through self-reflection.That is,self-reflection plays a mediating role partially in the relationship between participative leadership and employees’ exploration learning and exploitation learning;(3)Psychological capital positively regulates the mechanism of “participative leadership and self-reflection”;(4)Psychological capital positively regulates the mediating mechanism of“participative leadership — self-reflection — employees’ exploration learning” and“participative leadership — self-reflection — employees’ exploitation learning”.To sum up,the theoretical contributions of this study are mainly reflected in the following three aspects: Firstly,the positive correlation between participative leadership and employees’ exploration learning and exploitation learning has been proposed and checked.Secondly,the mediating role of self-reflection in the influence of participative leadership on exploration learning and exploitation learning has been clarified.Thirdly,the moderating effect of psychological capital on the relationship between participation leadership,self-reflection,exploration learning and exploitation learning has been checked.There are 12 figures,60 tables and 160 references in this study.