How does Distributed Leadership Influence the Proactive Behavior of the New Generation of Employees? Integration Mechanism based on perspective of social exchange and self-enhancement

Qiang Li^1* Li Qiang² Lin l. Wang³ Shang j. Li³ Fei y. Zhou³ Yi g. Wu⁴

• ¹School of Journalism and Communication, Huanggang Normal University, China
• ²School of Journalism and Information Communication, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China
• ³School of Economics and Management, Hubei University of Technology, Wuhan, China, China
• ⁴Research Center for Energy Economics, School of Business Administration, Henan Polytechnic University, Jiaozuo, China, China

Purpose: according to social exchange theory and self-enhancement theory, this paper takes the new generation of employees as the research object, which is to explore the impact mechanism of distributed leadership on the proactive behavior, and in this process, the mediating roles of idiosyncratic deals and meaningfulness of work, as well as the chain mediating effects of the two.
Participants and Methods: a list of employees born between 1980 and 1999 and managers who participated in the survey was determined, and each one was coded to facilitate the matching of leader evaluation data with employee self-evaluation data in the later stage. Then, we used 304 valid survey data for hierarchical regression and structural equation model statistical analysis.
Results: distributed leadership is significantly positively correlated with the proactive behavior of the new generation of employees; idiosyncratic deals play a mediating role between distributed leadership and proactive behavior; meaningfulness of work plays a mediating role in the relationship between distributed leadership and proactive behavior; idiosyncratic deals and meaningfulness of work play a chain mediating role between distributed leadership and the proactive behavior.
Conclusion: this study supports the views of existing scholars on the explanation of social exchange theory on idiosyncratic deals, expands the application of self enhancement theory in meaningfulness of work. Meanwhile, the chain mediating effect further explains in the context of distributed leadership with goal sharing, power flow, and responsibility sharing, the new generation of employees are more likely to engage in proactive behaviors, which provides theoretical evidence and practical implication for effectively stimulating the proactive behavior of the new generation of employees.