How does growth need strength influence employee outcomes? The roles of hope, leadership, and cultural value
基于希望理论，研究成长需求强度如何通过希望影响员工的工作绩效和情感承诺，并发现变革型领导和个人权力距离会调节这一过程。
Strong growth need is essential if an employee is to be motivated to complete complex and challenging jobs. It is important for organizations to attract employees with high growth need strength and help them achieve positive outcomes. However, limited research has been conducted to examine the mechanism underlying growth need strength’s positive effect on employee outcomes. Based on hope theory, we hypothesized that hope mediates the effect of growth need strength on job performance and affective commitment by transforming employees’ general desire for personal growth into goal-related cognitive thinking, comprising both ‘will’ and ‘ways’. We further hypothesized the moderating effect of transformational leadership, and the joint moderating effect of transformational leadership and individual power distance on the relationship between growth need strength and hope. We tested our hypotheses with data from a sample of 265 subordinate–supervisor dyads from China. Data analysis results supported the mediating role of hope. We found that growth need strength has a stronger effect on hope when transformational leadership is higher, and this effect is the strongest when both transformational leadership and individual power distance are simultaneously higher. The implications of these findings for human resource management research and practice are discussed.