ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Organizational Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1578771
Conceptual Construction and Scale Development of Leadership Taking Charge Behavior in the Chinese Cultural Context
Provisionally accepted
- Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
This study aims to address the measurement issues related to leaders' taking charge behavior within the context of Chinese culture and to fill the gap in the literature on taking charge behavior by developing and validating a scale for measuring this construct. In Study 1, a grounded coding method was used to construct a model of organizational identity structure and to preliminarily explore three dimensions of this behavior: initiative change, taking responsibility, and not fearing risks. In Study 2, exploratory factor analysis (N=249) and confirmatory factor analysis (N=244) were conducted to develop and validate a measurement scale with five items per dimension, confirming the best fit of a three-factor model. Additionally, to enhance the scale’s validity and practicality, three items with the highest factor loadings that best represent the core content of each dimension were selected to create a short version of the leadership taking charge behavior scale. Finally, Study 3 investigated the predictive utility of the short version of the leadership taking charge behavior scale by examining its relationships with two criterion variables: employees' felt obligation for constructive change and their perception of organizational change significance. This study also further explored the impact mechanisms of leadership taking charge behavior.
Keywords: taking charge, grounded theory, China, Structural dimensions, scale development
Received: 18 Feb 2025; Accepted: 10 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Bai, Li, Yan and Wang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Shuhui Li, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.