Research on concept connotations of leadership styles in conferences and its influencing mechanism on employees

Abstract

In the workplace, meetings play a crucial role in motivating employees, facilitating consensus among organizational members, and directing efforts towards common goals. As organizers and facilitators of meetings, leaders exhibit different behavioral styles that significantly influence the efficiency and effectiveness of the meetings. Scholars have emphasized the vital role of work meetings and the key impact of leaders on their effectiveness. Work meetings serve as important collaboration tools for achieving organizational goals and fostering consensus to address issues. Positive leadership behaviors during meetings positively contribute to meeting effectiveness and participant satisfaction, while negative behaviors can harm the effectiveness of the meetings. Therefore, the leadership style and conduct of leaders in meetings are of utmost importance. However, current literature on the dimensions and content of leadership styles in meetings remains in the theoretical discussion phase, lacking clear definitions of leadership styles in meetings and suitable measurement tools to assess the meeting leadership styles. Additionally, there is insufficient exploration of the mechanisms and outcomes of leadership styles in meetings. To address the gaps, this study focuses on the theme of “the impact of meeting leadership styles on employees” and consists of three main components. First, I define the conceptual meaning, specific dimensions, and content of leadership styles in meetings through a qualitative study by analyzing real meeting transcripts. Second, I develop a scale for measuring leadership styles in meetings based on the identified content. Third, based on social exchange theory, I investigate the mechanisms and boundary conditions of the impact of leadership styles in meetings on employees. The first part involves a qualitative study that uses grounded theory’s multiple coding techniques to analyze real meeting transcripts from four companies, resulting in the conceptual understanding and dimension division of leadership styles in meetings. The second part involves the development of a preliminary scale for leadership styles in meetings based on the coded content. The scale’s factor structure, reliability, and validity are tested through exploratory factor analysis (N = 400) and confirmatory factor analysis (N = 400). The third part, adopting the social exchange perspective, theoretically deduces the mechanisms through which leadership styles in meetings influence employee behavior. Data collected from 558 employees through a questionnaire support the theoretical hypotheses, revealing that positive meeting leadership styles enhance employee work engagement by increasing perceived respect and trust in the leader. Conversely, negative meeting leadership styles, characterized by negative leader behaviors, reduce perceived respect and trust, leading to decreased employee work engagement and task performance. The study also finds that employees’ self-serving attributions of leader behaviors moderate the impact of positive meeting leadership styles, and organizational identification moderates the impact of negative meeting leadership styles. This research contributes to literature in following aspects. First, it explores the concept and dimensions of leadership styles in meetings, enhancing the theoretical clarity of leadership styles in meetings. Second, by distinguishing the differential effects and mechanisms of leadership styles in meetings, it advances the understanding of the impact mechanisms of leadership styles in meetings. Furthermore, it enhances the understanding of the boundary conditions of the impact process of leadership styles in meetings. In practice, this research suggests that managers should pay attention to their styles in meetings and consider regulating employees’ perceptions of these styles, engaging in positive guidance when necessary.