Title:
How does instrumental leader behavior translate into job embeddedness and its downstream consequences? An eight-country study
Abstract:
This study investigates the effects of leaders' instrumental behavior on employees' on-the-job job embeddedness and its downstream consequences on task performance and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) across cultures. We also predict that country-level embeddedness-autonomy values, a cultural dimension reflecting the degree of collective integration and conformity within a society, moderates the relationship between leaders' instrumental behavior and employees' embeddedness. Utilizing multi-level techniques to analyze responses from 1,048 employees and 444 supervisors across eight countries, we find support for our predictions. Specifically, the positive relationship between leaders' instrumental behavior and employees' on-the-job embeddedness is stronger in high autonomy cultures. Additionally, leaders' instrumental behavior has a positive indirect effect on leader ratings of employees' task performance and OCB via on-the-job embeddedness in high autonomy cultures. Finally, the indirect effect of leaders' instrumental behavior on task performance via on-the-job embeddedness is negative in high embeddedness cultures.