Look up, look around: Is there anything different about promoting team-level OCB in China?
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Shenjiang Mo
Lingnan College, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, Guangdong, China
Zhongming Wang
School of Management, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China
Simon A Booth
Henley Business School, University of Reading, Reading, Berkshire, UK
Kleio Akrivou
Henley Business School, University of Reading, Reading, Berkshire, UK
PP: 833 - 844
Abstract
Ethical leadership has been widely identified as the key variable in enhancing team-level organizational citizenship behavior (team-level OCB) in western economic and business contexts. This is challenged by empirical evidence in China and findings of this study. Our study examined the relationship between ethical leadership, organizational ethical context (ethical culture and corporate ethical values) and team-level OCB. Team-level data has been collected from 57 functional teams in 57 firms operating in China. The findings suggest that although ethical leadership is positively associated with team-level OCB, ethical context positively moderates the relationship between ethical leadership and team-level OCB. The higher ethical context is found to be, the greater is the (positive) effects of ethical leadership on team-level OCB and the opposite holds true when ethical context is low. Key implications are discussed on the role of contextual ethics for team level OCB, while managerial implications include how non-Chinese firms could improve team-level OCB in the Chinese business context.
Keywords
ethical leadership; ethical culture; corporate ethical values; team-level OCB; ethical context; ethical congruence
Article Text
Recently, extensive discussion of major business failures in ethical matters such as Enron demonstrated that a clear failure of top management to be recognized as practicing ethical leadership can seriously undermine employee willingness to engage in ethical behavior (Mulki, Jaramillo & Locander, 2009). People are more likely to 'go the extra mile' when they feel supported by an ethical leader role modeling (Lavelle, 2010) ethical ways of acting for followers. Several behavioral ethics scholars advocate ethical leadership as a key variable for enhancing individual OCB (Pearce & Herbik, 2004; Brown & Trevino, 2006). However, as implicitly assumed in the research examining individual level OCB, the dynamics of generating citizenship behavior in teams or organizations cannot be clearly understood if only team-level OCBs are considered in (Organ, 1988; Pearce & Herbik, 2004), which has encouraged new OCB research regarding the team level of analysis (Ehrhart, 2004; Ehrhart & Naumman, 2004). It has been argued that practitioners also increased efforts towards improving team-level OCB because collective employee effectiveness becomes extremely important in teamwork-based organizations (Guzzo & Dickson, 1996; Mayer, Kuenzi, Greenbaum, Barde & Salvador, 2009).
A series of empirical studies (such as Ball, Trevino & Sims, 1994; Pearce & Herbik, 2004) have demonstrated the impact of ethical leadership behaviors on the development of OCB norms and practices in teams (Ehrhart & Naumman, 2004). However, most of these studies were conducted in a western/anglosaxon business and economic/social contexts (mainly in the US. or the UK). As we know, western/anglosaxon cultures sharply differs from the eastern ones, in terms of individualism vs. collectivism; the latter is a major cultural aspect in the East, particularly in Confucian China (Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Paine & Bachrach, 2000). For employees in individualistic cultures it may be sufficient to look up to one's direct leaders as ethical role models, whilst employees in collectivistic societies not only look up to their leaders' modeling behavior, but also 'look around', paying attention to cues in the overall context (may be implicitly reflected in the organizational culture, values and relationships with key stakeholders) for the presence or absence of ethical concerns in the observed behaviors (Euwema, Wendt & Emmerik, 2007).
Currently we are experiencing an increasing global collaboration between different firms across many different cultures. China has become a focal point of joint venture business and market expansion for western firms (Child, 1994; Hui & Graen, 1997). Expatriate managers from the home (western) multinationals are being sent to lead functional teams in Chinese joint venture firms, and new subsidiaries are being established in China, employing local Chinese managers. A considerable number of the western firms that have established a presence in China have reported serious difficulty to encourage local Chinese employees in initiating OCB (Becton & Field, 2009). One way to understand reasons for this difficulty in OCB engagement among Eastern/Chinese employees by western managers is to wonder if the assumption regarding the presence or absence of ethical leadership by the direct manager (drawn from studies of western individualistic cultures) is the only determinant of OCB and team level OCB in the Chinese context? Thus, it is a useful extension of theory to explore how it applies in different contexts, by asking how is team-level OCB enhanced in Eastern/Chinese work contexts?
To empirically test current (western) theoretical models for empirical replication in non-western work contexts, this study first explores effects of ethical leadership in improving team-level OCB. Second, to further extend relevant theory based on the difference of contextual and cultural ethics in the East, we articulate and test a different mechanism for generating OCB at the team level in Chinese culture: by being based on the premise that it is primarily guided by collectivist (as opposed to individualist) orientations, we operationalize this different contextual assumption by introducing the idea of the ethical context (ethical culture and corporate ethical values) as a moderating variable. Finally, theoretical and managerial implications are discussed, aiming to promote the significance of the role of context for ethical theory and applications and practically answer the key question of how could non-Chinese firms improve team-level OCB in the Chinese business market.
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