領導者中庸思維對中層管理人員心理契約違背及離職傾向的研究

Abstract

Zhongyong thinking is the core of Chinese culture. Under the impact of zhongyong philosophy, zhongyong thinking is one of the main ways of thinking in the Chinese people's consciousness and subconsciousness. In recent years, the zhongyong thinking has been highly valued by psychologists and management scholars, although the research on the zhongyong thinking in indigenous psychology has gradually expanded from the philosophical qualitative description level to the quantitative operational level. However, most of them are based on the individual level to study the influence of zhongyong thinking of employees on their behavior and work performance. Few studies apply this important construct to the research of leadership level. It is even rarer to combine the leader's zhongyong thinking with psychological contract violation and turnover tendency of middle managers. Leaders' thinking and management style are very important in business management. In fact, the way of thinking and preferences of leaders in decision-making will affect all aspects of the company through strategic decision-making, corporate culture or working atmosphere. As an important foundation of the employee-organization relationship, the psychological contract reflects the employee's expectations in the exchange behavior with the organization and the cognition of the behavior of both parties. The violation of psychological contract will bring negative effects such as anger, sabotage, and resignation, which will affect the company's operation and production. As the mainstay of business management, middle-level managers play a key role in the stability and development of the company. Therefore, whether and how the thinking style of leaders affects the psychological contract violation of middle-level managers is an important and interesting research topic.

This study takes the leader's zhongyong thinking as an independent variable, and on the basis of summarizing and defining its concept, theoretically proposes its influence on the psychological contract violation and turnover tendency of middle managers, as well as the influence of different leaders' personality traits on the changes in the degree of influence of psychological contract violation on turnover intention. This study uses two sample data sources and two time points to collect questionnaires. That is, the middle manager questionnaire is collected at the first time point, and the leader questionnaire is collected at the second time point (1 month later). Analyzing the data of 69 effective Chinese companies to verify the proposed hypothesis, the research results show that the leader's zhongyong thinking has a significant negative impact on the psychological contract violation and turnover tendency of middle managers, and the psychological contract violation of middle managers plays an intermediary role between the leader's zhongyong thinking and their intention to leave. In addition, the personality traits of narcissistic leaders will intensify the positive effect of psychological contract violation on turnover intention, while the personality traits of humble leaders will weaken the positive effect of psychological contract violation on turnover intention.

Based on the research results of local psychology in recent years, this paper explores the effect of the leadership's zhongyong thinking on the psychological contract violation and turnover tendency of middle managers, and pays attention to the influences of two seemingly contradictory but coexisting leadership traits: narcissism and humility. The theoretical contribution of the research lies in the fact that starting from the actual management issues of enterprises and responding to scholars' call for increasing attention to traditional Chinese culture, this research further supplements and expands the existing research results on the zhongyong thinking, and enables the business leaders to have a correct understanding of the zhongyong thinking, in order to clarify the current corporate practice about whether the zhongyong leadership can help the business management controversy. This study explores the influence of the doctrine of leadership on the behavior of middle-level managers and enriched the existing organizational behavior literature involving Chinese traditional culture; By examining that the psychological contract violation of middle-level managers is influenced by the leader's doctrine of the mean, this study expands and enriches the discussion of the antecedents of the influence of the existing research on the psychological contract violation; By discussing the moderating effects of the humble and narcissistic leadership traits -- narcissistic leadership will strengthen the positive impact of middle-level management's psychological contract violation on turnover intention, and humble leadership will weaken the positive impact of middle-level management's psychological contract violation on turnover intention, this study discovers and tests the boundary condition of the relationship between psychological contract violation and turnover intention. In sum, this article tries to combine the Chinese traditional philosophy of the zhongyong thinking and the western psychology of the psychological contract violation in the field of management. It is a further development and advancement of the scientific management of traditional Chinese philosophy and the sinicization of western management science. At the same time, it is also an incremental breakthrough in the application of Chinese traditional culture in the organizational behavior literature.

Date of Award	9 Apr 2021
Original language	Chinese (Traditional)
Awarding Institution	City University of Hong Kong
Supervisor	Chenting SU (Supervisor)