Seminar (Dept. of Organization and Human Resources)

Theme：How do Leaders with Prevention Focus Promote Followers’ Proactivity?

Speaker：Shengming Liu (School of Management, Fudan University)

Time：2022-05-18 14:00

Address：Online Meeting

Language：Chinese/English

ABSTRACT:

Leaders are motivated to avoid mistakes and failures in the management. This motivation helps organizational operation and restricts leaders’ improper behaviors; however, it potentially prevents followers from proactive behaviors due to the worry and fear of loss. In this paper, we use the prevention focus to describe such a motivation and propose that leaders’ prevention focus can promote followers’ proactive behaviors through cultivating the climate of learning from failure.

We collected data from 78 work teams in a large medicine corporation in eastern China. The results showed that team power distance moderated the relationship between leaders’ prevention focus and team learning-from-failure climate. In addition, team learning-from-failure climate was positively related to followers’ proactivity behavior and their engagement in the creative process. Whereas previous literature of prevention focus mainly focuses on the negative outcomes, this research found that prevention focus can bring positive influence to the team via cultivating learning-from-failure climate. This research also has important practical implications by showing how to encourage the followers of leaders with prevention focus to be more proactive without indulging the fear of failure.