组织与人力资源系学术讲座

主 题：Multilevel Power Plays: How Machiavellian Middle Managers Use Upward Guanxi and Downward Abusive Supervision to Gain Power

主讲人: 冯志玉（博士候选人, 新加坡南洋理工大学领导力与组织管理学系）

时 间：2019-11-27 15:30

地 点：明商1008教室

语 言：中英文

ABSTRACT：

Drawing from the Machiavellianism and social influence literatures, we theorize and test how and when Machiavellian middle managers strategically “kiss up” and “kick down” to successfully gain power from above and below. Specifically, we theorize that Machiavellian middle managers would use a soft, upward influence tactic to build close guanxi (i.e., interpersonal connection) with their senior manager to gain greater relational empowerment, while simultaneously using a hard, downward influence tactic of abusive supervision to gain coercive power over their subordinates. Moreover, we theorize that the simultaneous positive indirect effects between: (1) middle manager Machiavellianism and relational empowerment via middle manager-senior manager guanxi and (2) middle manager Machiavellianism and coercive power over subordinates via abusive supervision would be strengthened when Machiavellian middle managers perceive a threat to the existing hierarchy of power. We test these hypotheses with three-wave, three-source data collected across a variety of industries in China. Overall, the present research advances our understanding of how Machiavellian middle managers can effectively leverage different forms of influence tactics to maximize power in organizations.

 BIO：

Zhiyu FENG is a doctoral candidate in Division of Leadership, Management & Organization at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore. Before joining the Ph.D. program of NTU, he received his master degree in Business Administration from Nanjing University in 2015, and his bachelor degree in Logistics Management from Nanjing University of Finance and Economics in 2012. Zhiyu’s research interests fall into the intersection of three broad research domains: (a) leadership, (b) business and behavioral ethics, and (c) decision making. For his dissertation, he adopts a third-party perspective on examining how witnessing the abusive supervision of coworkers (coworker abusive supervision) can influence third-party employees’ reactions, and unraveling how third-party employees can become involved as a non-independent bystander in the activation, appraisal, and response phases of coworker abusive supervision. His dissertation won the 2019 Kwok Leung Memorial Dissertation Award.