效忠主管与员工工作绩效的关系:反馈寻求行为和权力距离的影响

效忠主管一直是华人组织经久不衰的议题,尽管已有文献认为员工效忠主管有助于提升其工作绩效,然而关于效忠主管通过怎样的具体机制来影响员工工作绩效却并未得到系统的阐释。本文以14家企业的360名员工为样本,探讨了效忠主管对工作绩效的影响机制,尤其是研究员工反馈寻求行为在其中的中介作用及员工权力距离的调节作用。分析结果表明,效忠主管对员工工作绩效、反馈寻求行为都有显著的正向影响;反馈寻求行为在效忠主管与工作绩效关系中起完全中介作用。另外,员工的权力距离负向调节了效忠主管与反馈寻求行为的正相关关系,即员工的权力距离越低,两者的正向相关关系越强。

The Relationship between Loyalty to Supervisor and Employee Job Performance: The Effect of Feedback Seeking Behavior and Power Distance

Loyalty to supervisor is important in organizations,especially in Chinese context.Supervisors in Chinese organizations evaluate their subordinates’ effectiveness,make promotion decisions and assign challenging tasks according to how loyal the subordinates are to their supervisors.Thus,loyalty to supervisors may have a significant impact on employee behavior.However,researches on loyalty to supervisors in Chinese context are rare.Although studies have suggested that loyalty to supervisor affect employee job performance,evidence regarding the mechanisms between loyalty to supervisor and employee job performance remains inconclusive and underdeveloped.Some researchers believe that subordinates may proactively seek feedback,as they wish to know exactly how their work has been evaluated and what they should do to manage their careers.This kind of behavior is regarded as feedback seeking.Previous studies on feedback seeking demonstrated a positive relationship between feedback seeking behavior and wok performance.Hence,the first objective of this study is to examine whether feedback seeking behavior mediate the relationship between loyalty to supervisor and employee job performance.Because cultural value orientations,or individual cultural values and beliefs(e.g.,power distance) also play an important role in how employee react,the second objective of this study is to examine the moderating effect of power distance on the relationship between loyalty to supervisors and feedback seeking behavior.Multiple regression analyses based on a sample of 360 employees in 14 firms show that:(1) loyalty to supervisor has a significantly positive impact on job performance;(2) loyalty to supervisor has a significantly positive impact on feedback seeking behavior;(3) feedback seeking behavior fully mediated loyalty to supervisor’s influence on job performance;(4) power distance negatively moderated the relationships between loyalty to supervisor and feedback seeking behavior in such a way that the relationships were stronger for individuals lower than higher in power distance.Our research contributes to the loyalty to supervisor literature by answering how and why loyalty to supervisor is related to employee job performance in Chinese context.Managerial implications and limitations of the study are discussed.