Lianying Zhang’s research while affiliated with Tianjin University and other places

Purpose Project-based organizations (PBOs) face challenges to enhance employee work engagement because of dynamic and constant role configuration. Accordingly, this study aims to explore how ethical leadership enhances employee work engagement from a sensemaking perspective. Design/methodology/approach This study used a questionnaire-based quantitative research design to collect data from 194 full-time employees in PBOs. The data were analyzed via partial least squares-structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) technique to test hypotheses. Findings The findings show a positive relationship between ethical leadership and work engagement. Additionally, the relationship between ethical leadership and work engagement is mediated by two sensemaking mechanisms, i.e. goal commitment and prosocial. Originality/value This study deepens the understanding of how ethical leadership enhances work engagement in PBOs by providing two sensemaking mechanisms. By exploring the sensemaking process through which ethical leaders help employees construct identity, the findings contribute to the current literature on how ethical leadership enhances work engagement in PBOs.

Purpose Positive interpersonal interactions are indispensable for employees to engage in organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) that benefits teamwork; however, co-worker ostracism triggers interpersonal isolation, inhibiting OCB. This research aims to leverage the intervention of ethical leadership in the ostracism–OCB relationship to moderate the harmful ostracism and promote ostracized employees’ OCB through employee self-identity. Methods This research chose 122 MBA to participate in Study 1’s scenario experiment to verify the causality between variables. Study 2 used 295 valid questionnaires from full-time employees to generalize the experimental results to field settings and compensate for external validity. Two studies used Hayes’s conditional process model to test the conditional direct and indirect relationships. Findings This research revealed that high levels of ethical leadership effectively transitioned the harmful ostracism and promoted ostracized employees’ OCB by satisfying ostracized employees’ needs for identity recognition. Accordingly, the direct and indirect effects of co-worker ostracism on OCB through employee self-identity would be positive at high levels of ethical leadership, but negative at low levels. Originality This research first introduces an identity perspective on ethical leadership in moderating the ostracism–OCB relationship. Based on the social identity theory of leadership, this research fills the gap in ostracism and OCB research calling for leadership interventions. It extends a novel insight into inspiring ostracized employees’ participation in OCB through employee self-identity. Practical Implications This research provides the managerial applications of ethical leadership for China organizations to reduce inadvertent inactions, accept employees’ identities, and value interpersonal communication for effectively transitioning harmful ostracism.

Owing to the natural complexity and uncertainty of construction projects, more and more contracts tend to add flexibility to be able to deal with emergencies, thus promoting the smooth implementation of projects. Contractual flexibility has a certain impact on contractors’ opportunistic behavior, but because of the lack of relevant empirical studies, its influencing mechanism and conclusions have been controversial. The purpose of this paper is to reveal whether and how contractual flexibility restrains a contractor’s opportunistic behavior. In this paper, data are collected from 290 responses to an opinion questionnaire survey and are analyzed with partial-least-squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). The results indicate that contractual flexibility can restrain a contractor’s opportunistic behavior, and the relationships are mediated by a contractor’s interorganizational justice perceptions. Meanwhile, the communication quality can strengthen the effect of contractual flexibility on interorganizational justice perceptions and opportunistic behavior. The research conclusions of this paper not only deepen scholars’ understanding of contractual flexibility in the field of construction projects but also provide a solid theoretical basis for future in-depth research. The conclusions also provide some practical suggestions for managers of construction projects, emphasizing the important role of contractual flexibility, interorganizational justice perception, and communication quality in restraining contractors’ opportunistic behavior.

Employee wellbeing is a crucial determinant in overall organizational performance. However, in the construction Industry, it is damaged by hazardous and stressful work environment. This study aims to explore how ethical leadership influences and thus could enhance employee wellbeing through perceived organizational support (POS). We proposed several hypotheses and developed the research framework accordingly. To test the hypotheses, an elaborately designed survey was used to collect quantitative data from 194 employees in the construction companies in China. Our results show that ethical leadership is positively related to the employee wellbeing. This study further reveals a remarkable indirect effect of ethical leadership on employee wellbeing via the mediating POS. Consequently, our findings suggest that, to enhance employee wellbeing, ethical leaders can develop a relaxing ethical environment and provide sufficient organizational support to the employees.

Integrated project delivery mode (IPD) depends on high-level knowledge collaboration among project parties. Therefore, knowledge collaboration is critical for IPD to improve knowledge management performance and sustainable competitive advantage. However, effective knowledge collaboration is difficult to achieve because of the diverse knowledge and expertise area of IPD project parties. For a high level of cross-disciplinary knowledge collaboration, this study examines how relational norms and trust as two effective relational governance mechanisms affect knowledge collaboration through verifying the role of transactive memory system (TMS). Then, we proposed statistical hypotheses and tested them by using quantitative data from a questionnaire survey. The research findings present a remarkable indirect influence of relational norms and trust on knowledge collaboration via the mediating role of TMS. This study contributes to the literature in project and engineering management by demonstrating the significant role of TMS in IPD collaboration, especially the mediating effect of TMS on the relationship between relational governance and knowledge collaboration. The research findings provide the collaborative governance strategies for engineering managers by developing a well-functioning TMS to realize holistic knowledge collaboration for IPD projects.

The interorganizational context of construction projects offers project managers multiple social identifications (i.e., project identification and organizational identification) and different tasks (i.e., interorganizational tasks and intraorganizational tasks), which may lead to ego depletion of project managers and impair project performance. Drawing on social identity theory and ego depletion theory, this study examines the effect of social identification on ego depletion of project managers via interorganizational and intraorganizational tasks. Using survey data from 432 construction project managers, the results show that project managers with strong project identification undertake more interorganizational tasks and less intraorganizational tasks, which increases their ego depletion. Conversely, project managers with strong organizational identification undertake more intraorganizational tasks and less interorganizational tasks, which decreases their ego depletion. The results also provide evidence that the effect of social identification on ego depletion is stronger when project complexity is high and weaker when project complexity is low. This study contributes to the understanding of ego depletion mechanism of project managers associated with the trade-off process between different identifications and project tasks. The findings advance the psychological underpinnings of organizational behavior in project organizations and can help project managers handle their ego depletion to achieve higher individual performance and project performance.

Constructive deviance, rule-breaking to benefit the organization, is an emerging topic in the scholarly research and is considered to be an ethical decision. Despite the value of guiding constructive deviance in organizations, the effect of ethics-oriented leadership on employees’ constructive deviance remains unclear. This research identifies leader moral humility as a new antecedent of constructive deviance and examines how and when leader moral humility influences employee constructive deviance. Drawing on social–cognitive theory, we propose that leader moral humility fosters employee moral identity, which in turn triggers employees to exhibit constructive deviance. Moreover, the mediating effect of moral identity is more pronounced when normative conflict with organizational rules is high, as this conflict inspires identity-driven behavior. Two studies with scenario-based experimental and time-lagged field methods provided general support for our hypotheses. Study 1 reveals that leader moral humility positively affects constructive deviance via employee moral identity. Study 2 replicates and extends Study 1 to support the moderating role of normative conflict. These findings enrich the understanding of constructive deviance by shedding light on the moral cognitive process in the relationship between leader moral humility and employee constructive deviance and by identifying the boundary condition for the relationship.

Building green retrofit offers significant opportunities for enhancing energy efficiency and achieving green development goals. However, a conflicting criterion exists between energy conservation and thermal comfort improvement when making optimal design solutions for building retrofit. This study presents a simulation-based energy-comfort optimization model to facilitate evaluating various design alternatives and balancing multiple objectives in building green retrofit. A building simulation model is first established to measure energy consumption and comfort level. Then, a multi-objective optimization method (response surface method) is employed to identify critical building parameters and generates a set of alternative plans for building retrofit based on green building standards. After that, optimal design solutions with trade-offs between thermal comfort and energy demand are obtained. A school building in Wuhan city of China is chosen as a case to validate the developed model, and ten building parameters pertaining to energy demand and environmental comfort are considered in the optimization process. The results show that four parameters are significantly sensitive to energy efficiency and thermal comfort, including insulation thickness of the external wall, the heat transmission coefficient of the roof, solar heat gain coefficient of the external window, and window to wall ratio. The optimal combination of four parameters approximately produces 4% of energy savings, as well as an improving level of environmental comfort. The study benefits designers and construction managers to determine optimal solutions for building retrofit to achieve better energy efficiency and comfort in green building development.

Purpose Megaprojects present an intricated pattern of leadership activities, which evolve over their planning and delivery and comprises several stakeholders. A framework is useful to navigate this complexity; it allows to identify and cluster the key elements. This paper aims to introduce a novel framework based on boundary spanners to describe the structural pattern of shared leadership in megaprojects. Design/methodology/approach A systematic literature review about boundary spanning and shared leadership is used to identify and cluster the key elements of shared leadership in megaprojects. The systematic literature review provides a rich theoretical background to develop the novel shared leadership framework based on boundary spanners. Findings There are three key dimensions characterizing shared leadership topology in megaprojects: stakeholders, boundary spanning leadership roles and project phases. The novel framework shows how project leadership dynamically transfers among different stakeholders, showing the importance of shared leadership as a leadership paradigm in megaprojects. Research limitations/implications The novel framework epitomizes shared leadership in megaprojects by exploring its antecedents with social network metrics. This paper stresses that shared leadership is the envisaged form of leadership in megaprojects. By modeling complex project leadership in a simple, yet effective way, the framework fosters critical thinking for future research. The modeling introduced by this framework would also benefit practitioners in charge of megaprojects. Originality/value The paper moves the project leadership research to the network-level by taking boundary spanners as shared leadership roles in megaprojects. It shows how shared leadership is a valuable management tool for planning and delivery megaprojects.