Xin-an Zhang

• PhD
• Professor at Shanghai Jiao Tong University

This article describes the development and validation of a scale that measures two distinct needs for individuals to manage their social "face". Scale development process resulted in an 11-item Consciousness of Social Face (CSF) scale made up of the following two correlated dimensions: desire to gain face and fear of losing face. The two-factor cor...

This study develops a model in which transformational leadership affects team coordination and performance through the conflict management approaches adopted by team members. Data were collected from three different sources in a lagged design from 108 teams in a large enterprise in China. Results support the reasoning that transformational leadersh...

Drawing on the principles of upper echelons theory and team leadership research and using 101 subsidiary top management teams (TMTs), our study revealed that subsidiary CEO transformational leadership that was focused evenly on every TMT member increased team effectiveness and firm performance, whereas leadership that differentiated among individua...

Research has shown that family motivation primarily exerts an energizing effect on employee performance. Challenging this notion, we argue that family motivation is a double-edged sword with both an energizing effect and a debilitating effect on employee performance, depending on the performance criterion in question. Specifically, drawing upon sel...

Background: COVID-19 has spread worldwide and generated tremendous stress on human beings. Unfortunately, it is often hard for distressed individuals to access mental health services under conditions of restricted movement or even lockdown.

This research examines the effect of an individual difference variable that reflects the extent to which one desires positive evaluations from others—that is, face consciousness on consumer energy-saving behavior—as well as the mechanism through which the effect occurs and conditions under which it varies. Drawing upon the means-end theory of lifes...

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.2196/37026.].

Background: COVID-19 has spread worldwide and generated tremendous stress on human beings. Unfortunately, it is often hard for distressed individuals to access mental health services under conditions of restricted movement or even lockdown. Objective: The study first aims to develop an online digital intervention package based on a commercially re...

BACKGROUND COVID-19 has spread worldwide and generated tremendous stress on human beings. Unfortunately, it is often hard for distressed individuals to access mental health services under conditions of restricted movement or even lockdown. OBJECTIVE The study first aims to develop an online digital intervention package based on a commercially rele...

Innovation is considered essential for today’s organizations to survive and thrive. Researchers have also stressed the importance of leadership as a driver of followers’ innovative work behavior (FIB). Yet despite a large amount of research, three areas remain understudied: (a) the relative importance of different forms of leadership for FIB; (b) t...

Innovation is considered essential for today’s organizations to survive and thrive. Researchers have also stressed the importance of leadership as a driver of followers’ innovative work behavior (FIB). Yet despite a large amount of research, three areas remain understudied: (a) the relative importance of different forms of leadership for FIB; (b) t...

Do leaders who build a sense of shared social identity in their teams thereby protect them from the adverse effects of workplace stress? This is a question that the present paper explores by testing the hypothesis that identity leadership contributes to stronger team identification among employees and, through this, is associated with reduced burno...

An increasing number of individuals work in jobs with little standardization and repetition, that is, with high levels of job non‐routinization. At the same time, demands for creativity are high, which raises the question of how employees can use job non‐routinization to develop creativity. Acknowledging the importance of social processes for creat...

Organizations frequently rely on peer performance ratings to capture employees' unique and difficult to observe contributions at work. Though useful, peers exhibit meaningful variance in the accuracy and informational utility they offer about ratees. In this research, we develop and test theory which suggests that raters' social network positions e...

Teams in organizations are becoming more gender diverse as women continue to participate more in the workforce than ever before. Prior theory and research indicate that the characteristics of the team influence whether gender diversity in a team is an asset or a detriment. As such, this research explores a contingency model of the relation between...

This paper contributes to growing research exploring employee attitudinal and behavioral reactions to organizational corporate social responsibility initiatives focused on environmental and social responsibility and sustainability. Drawing on social identity theory, we develop and test a moderated-mediation model where employees’ organizational ide...

This research examines the effect of an individual difference variable that reflects the extent to which one desires positive evaluations from others—that is, face consciousness on consumer energy-saving behavior—as well as the mechanism through which the effect occurs and conditions under which it varies. Drawing upon the means-end theory of lifes...

In recent years, the fashion market in China has greatly expanded. However, little is known about why Chinese consumers purchase fashion products. Drawing on the theory of social motivation, this research proposes that face affects fashion consumption but that it exerts two contrasting effects, depending on the type of consumers’ motivation regardi...

Purpose Luxury consumption in China is featured by clear conspicuous purposes. The purpose of this paper is to investigate this phenomenon from the indigenous perspective of face consciousness. Design/methodology/approach Drawing on Ho’s (1976) framework of gaining vs losing face process, the authors decomposed the construct of face consciousnes...

Recent theorizing applying the social identity approach to leadership proposes a four‐dimensional model of identity leadership that centres on leaders’ management of a shared sense of ‘we’ and ‘us’. This research validates a scale assessing this model – the Identity Leadership Inventory ( ILI ). We present results from an international project with...

Achievement goals are cognitive representations that guide behavior to a competence-related future end state. Existing theories and empirical findings suggest that achievement goals are potentially related to life satisfaction. However, the relationship between achievement goals and life satisfaction remains relatively unexplored in the psychology...

Researchers have paid limited attention to what makes organizational authority figures decide to treat their employees either justly or unjustly. Drawing from the actor-focused model of justice, as well as the stereotype content model, we argue that employee conscientiousness and agreeableness can impact the extent to which supervisors adhere to no...

Organizations increasingly depend on employee efforts to innovate. However,the quality of relationships between leaders and employees may affect the recognition that employees receive for their innovative work behaviors. Drawing from a social cognition perspective, we tested a model in which leader-member exchange (LMX) moderates the impact of empl...

Researchers have paid limited attention to what makes organizational authority figures decide to treat their employees either justly or unjustly. Drawing from the actor-focused model of justice, as well as the stereotype content model, we argue that employee conscientiousness and agreeableness can impact the extent to which supervisors adhere to no...

Extraversion has exhibited inconsistent relationships with employees’ interpersonal citizenship. Across three studies, we integrate literature on personality with impression management and socioanalytic theories to propose that employees’ impression management motives act as a contingency, strengthening the relationship between extraversion and int...

Cumulative research indicates that deep acting has a nonsignificant relationship with employee exhaustion, despite arguments that deep acting can be beneficial. To illuminate when deep acting leads to more positive employee outcomes, we draw on the resource conservation perspective to propose a within-individual model of deep acting that focuses on...

Teams are composed of individual members who collectively contribute to team success. As a result, contemporary team research tends to focus on how team overall properties (e.g., the average of team personality and behavior) affect team processes and effectiveness while overlooking the potential unique influences of specific members on team outcome...

-Chinese consumers are interested in status consumption, i.e., in striving to enhance their social standings through the consumption of luxury products. This study investigates how face consciousness, one's social self-esteem, and desire to be respected influences status consumption behavior in China. The Consciousness of Social Face Scale, the Soc...

Team members typically make unequal – and, from the outside, unquantifiable – contributions toward team goals. Acknowledging this challenge, managers frequently use peer-ratings to gain an insider perspective of individuals’ performance. To date, peer-rated performance has overwhelmingly been operationalized using simple aggregation models, whereby...

Cumulative research indicates that deep acting has a nonsignificant relationship with employee exhaustion, despite arguments that deep acting can be beneficial. To illuminate when deep acting leads to more positive employee outcomes, we draw on the resource conservation perspective to propose a within-individual model of deep acting that focuses on...

Conventional wisdom and organizational scholars have suggested that the success of organizations, units, and teams lies in the hand of core employees who demonstrate superior performance or occupy important positions. As a result, core employees often have priorities to receive valuable resources, particularly when the resources are limited. Simila...

We conducted an experience sampling study of service workers in order to contribute to the burgeoning literature on prosocial motivation. We sought to highlight a boundary condition for the relational aspects of jobs by identifying the importance of the nature of call-center workers’ perceptions of the interpersonal justice of their interactions wi...

Although the ethical aspects of transformational leadership have attracted considerable attention, very little is known about followers’ reactions to the moral and immoral conduct of transformational leaders. Against this background, this study examined whether and how transformational leadership interacts with moral and authoritarian leadership be...

Researchers consistently argue that organizations need to generate creative ideas to ensure long-term success and survival. One possible solution for increasing creativity is to inject “fresh blood” into the organization by hiring new employees. However, past work suggests there may be a number of impediments that stifle newcomer creativity and, fu...

The transfer model of organizational identification (OI) posits a trickle‐down process of OI from leaders to followers. This, in turn, should foster employees’ willingness to engage in extra‐role behaviour. Prior research has provided consistent support for the model in field studies and experimental settings. The present studies extend the OI tran...

The purpose of the study was to investigate the effects of face consciousness on happiness and the moderating role of financial situation on this relationship. We first examined our hypotheses in study 1 in a particular setting of consumption, and replicated our findings in study 2 in a more generalized setting of interpersonal situations. The two...

The purpose of the current study was to more fully investigate the association between money and Subjective Well-Being (SWB) by treating face consciousness as a moderator variable and financial satisfaction as a mediator variable. We examined a sample of college students and found the effect of money on SWB is contingent on subjects' face conscious...

China is a large heterogeneous market with diversified consumer behaviour in different regions. This study aims to examine personal value differences between consumers in China’s inland and coastal regions, and further examine their influence on retail buying decisions. Data are collected from coastal cities (Shanghai and Guangzhou) and inland citi...