The role of inclusive leadership on job performance through mediators in interior design and construction companies in Vietnam

H. T.N. Le

Van Hien University, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

P.V. Nguyen, T.V.A. Trinh & H.T.S. Do

International University-Vietnam National University, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

ABSTRACT: This study was intended to develop a conceptual model to investigate the indirect effects of inclusive leadership on job performance throughout the mediating factors, including person-job fit, employee well-being and innovative behaviour.

1 INTRODUCTION

Recently, researchers have focused on employee well-being and innovative behaviour (Mumford et al. 2002, Scott & Bruce 1994) as major predictors of organizational performance (Huhtala & Parzefall 2007).

In general, leadership has significant impacts on employee well-being and innovative behaviour (Arnold et al. 2007, Gong et al. 2009). However, the linkages among these factors in a specific setting have rarely been studied. Several scholars encour­aged further studies to examine relational leadership since an increasing emphasis is based on building a relationship between supervisors and subordinators, which calls for leaders’ contribution to create an inspiring workplace (Uhl-Bien 2006, Carmeli et al.

Although some studies demonstrated a strong relationship between person-job fit and specific styles of leadership (Mulki et al. 2006), employee well-being (Singh & Greenhaus 2004), and innovative behaviour (Afsar et al. 2015), few studies have identified the mediating effect of person-job fit.

In the Asian context, Vietnam highly represents collectivism and high uncertainty avoidance (Wang & Yi 2011). In such society, employees are more comfortable and intrinsically motivated by sharing an intimate relationship with their colleagues and leaders. Therefore, this study stresses the importance of leadership practices, specifically inclusive leader­ship, and its effectiveness in shaping a supportive working climate. In a creativity-intensive field like architectural and engineering design sector, employ­ees should acquire particular abilities to match with the job requirements. These factors, which can be fostered under the encouraging working environ­ment, ultimately stimulate high performance. To fully understand job performance and its predictors, we propose the conceptual model to test the relation between inclusive leadership, person-job fit and innovative behaviour, and in turn, the findings enable us to suggest some practical implications to enhance job performance.

2 LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Inclusive leadership and employee well-being

The inclusive leadership is identified by three facets consisting of “openness, accessibility, and availability to pay attention to employee ideas” (Carmeli et al. 2010). It enhances the beliefs that members’ voices are genuinely appreciated which proposes the positive emotional leader-member ties (Choi et al. 2017). Hence, it has a significant effect on employee well­being.

H1: the inclusive leadership has a positive impact on employee well-being.

2.2 Inclusive leadership and personal job-fit

According to Shin (2004), person-job fit has been recognized as the perception of harmonizing between employees’ qualities and job demand. Three potential ways illustrate that the inclusive leadership is significantly associated with person-job fit. Firstly, according to (Choi et al. 2015), the inclu­sive leadership’s openness may help reduce follow­ers’ uncertainty and ambiguity of their roles. Next, the inclusive leadership creates a supportive work climate that strengthens the belief of person-job fit (Tims et al. 2011). Finally, mastery experience through managers’ constant support is able to foster employees’ self-evaluation in their capacities through positive feedback about their performance (Tims et al. 2011).

Therefore, the following hypothesis is suggested:

H2: the inclusive leadership has a positive impact on person-job fit.

2.3 Inclusive leadership and innovative behaviour

Innovative behaviour is described as “the intentional introduction within one’s work role of new and useful ideas, processes, products, or procedures” by West (1990). Previous studies demonstrated that spe­cific leadership styles motivate employee innovation (Shalley & Gilson 2004) such as transformational leadership (Afsar et al. 2015, Sharifirad 2013) and ethical leadership (Yidong & Xinxin 2013).

The prior studies found the relationship between the inclusive leadership and innovative behaviour in three different ways. Firstly, the leaders with sup­portive behaviour motivate their employee’s engage­ment in innovative work because they receive emotional and cognitive resources (Vinarski-Peretz & Carmeli 2011). Secondly, employees’ novel ideas are stimulated in the supportive working climate. They contribute to the foundation of perception of support for employees’ creativity and innovation (Cerne et al.

H3: the inclusive leadership has a positive impact on employee innovative behaviour.

2.4 Person-job fit and employee well-being and performance

Person-job fit is associated with employee well­being and job performance in several ways. First, employees who well perceive that the requirements of the job are within their capabilities often feel more fulfilled in their work (Quinn 2005). Second, the positive perception of person-job fit results in less pressure and burnout (Singh & Greenhaus 2004) and less worry (Quinn 2005). As a result, it enhances their well-being at work. Finally, combination of employees’ capabilities and job demands help them to manage the tasks more effectively (Brkich et al. 2002, Hamid & Yahya 2011). Hence, we suggest two hypotheses (H4) and (H5):

H4: Person-job fit has a positive impact on employee well-being.

H5: Person-job fit has a positive impact on job performance.

2.5 Employee well-being and job performance

Previous studies have found the positive linkage between employee well-being and job performance (Lyubomirsky et al. 2005). Wright (2014) suggests that “Emotion-based employee well-being is attained by an employee when s/he experiences psychological well­being in the form of lack of stress and emotional burn­out, and positive affectivity.” It was also pointed out that emotion-based employee well-being is more likely to have a positive relation to job performance (Wright & Hobfoll 2004). Additionally, the state of enthusiasm, activeness, and consciousness play a predicting role in several job outcomes (Choi & Lee 2014). Therefore, the following hypothesis (H6) is suggested:

H6: Work well-being has a positive impact on employee job performance.

2.6 Person-job fit and innovative behaviour

When employees self-evaluate themselves for being qualified for the job, they form a sense of contentment, achievement, and confidence (Xie & Johns 1995).

H7: Person-job fit has a positive impact on innovative behaviour.

2.7 Innovative behaviour and job performance

The innovative behaviour includes discovering new technologies, introducing new techniques to meet objectives, applying new task methods, and investigat­ing resources for generating new ideas (Janssen 2000). Employees’ willingness to learn, explore and initiate ideas results in resolution of pressing problems; conse­quently, triggering higher job performance (Amabile et al. 2005). Thus, hypothesis 8 is suggested:

H8: Innovative behaviour has a positive impact on job performance.

3 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

3.1 Measurement

All measurements items were rated on the five-point Likert scale, ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). Particularly, Appendix 1 shows the measures of variables with the relative sources.

3.2 Methodology

3.2.1 Questionnaire design

The questionnaire covers two main parts: (1) respond­ents’ profile including age, gender, education level and working position and (2) 36 questions relating to the hypothetical model. It was translated into the Viet­namese language with some adjustments to be more compatible within the Vietnamese context.

3.2.2 Data collection

The data were collected through two phases: a pilot test and official survey, which was conducted in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Pilot test with the sample size of 37 was carried out to check the measurement scale.

4 RESULTS

4.1 Demographic characteristics

By gender, the percentage of the male is dominant, at 52.7%, while respondents whose age ranging from 21 - 40 takes the proportion of round 95%. Last demographic information revealed that the number of employees who have the academic level of

Table 1. Reliability analysis.

undergraduate and above was nearly ¾ of the total samples.

4.2 Reliability analysis

To analyze the reliability, a calculation of Cron- bach’s alpha coefficients was made by implementing exploratory factor analysis (EFA) by using the soft­ware SPSS 20.0. According to (Kline 1998), all of the Cronbach’s alpha coefficients and factor loadings of all items reach the required standard (above 0.5), excluding that the factor loading of JP1 equals 0.484 which is close to the requirement (See in Table 1).

4.3 Confirmation factor analysis

Based on the Table 2 below, the analysis of fitness of structural model through conducting confirmation

Table 2. Composite reliability and average variance extracted.

factor analysis (CFA) including Composite Reliabil­ity (CR) and Average Variance Extracted (AVE) indicated the statistical significance of proposed hypotheses according to Hair et al. (1998).

4.4 Structural equation modelling & Hypothesis testing

Structural equation modelling (SEM) was conducted with the software AMOS 20.0. It was observed that all values of model fit indices are acceptable (see Table 3).

Figure 1 shows the testing results.

Table 3. Model fit indices in CFA and SEM.

** good, * moderate. CMIN/df = Chi-square/df, GFI = Goodness-of-Fit Index, AGFI = adjusted GFI, CFI = Comparative Fit Index, TLI = Tucker Lewis Index, RMSEA = Root Mean Squared Error of Approximation.

Figure 1. Testing results.

Table 4. Reliability analysis.

Table 4 illustrates that all hypotheses are statistic­ally significant.

5 DISCUSSION

It was proposed that employee well-being and innova­tive behaviour could be fostered through inspirational leadership style (Sharifirad 2013). The findings dem­onstrated that the inclusive leadership has a positive influence on employee well-being and innovative behaviour. These results are consistent with prior studies (Arnold et al. 2007, Choi et al. 2017, Gong et al. 2009, Carmeli et al. 2010, Cerne et al. 2013).

Leadership is considered essential to trigger employees’ engagement in generating innovative ideas in a knowledge-intensive, complicated and cre­ative environment like the interior design industry in Vietnam (Mumford et al. 2002, Carmeli et al. 2010). Leaders’ supportive behaviour may strengthen the relationship with their employees, which in turn results in fuelling employees’ motivation and organ­izational commitment to the innovating process.

Next, the current study investigated the inclusive leadership which is distinctive from general leader­ship style (Carmeli et al. 2010) by centering and pri­oritizing employees’ needs over collective interests to enhance their well-being (Hollander 2012). It is in line with a previous finding (Shuck & Herd 2012). Specifically, leaders’ attentive behaviour to employ­ees’ needs can create a motivational workplace.

The results also show that the correlation between the inclusive leadership and innovative behaviour and employee well-being becomes stronger through person-job fit. By studies of Brkich et al. (2002) and Singh & Greenhaus (2004), our result discovers the suitability between employees and job characteristics enhance their well-being. Similarly, person-job fit also has a positive influence on employees’ engage­ment in innovative activities (Afsar et al. 2015).

Other findings of the study also suggested a prom­ising path for future research on the mediating role of person-job fit in the linkages between different styles of leadership and employee well-being and innovative behaviour with distinct characteristics in Vietnam. In addition to prior research that discovers the impact of person-job fit on several job-related outcomes (Cable

6 DeRue 2002), the correlation between person-job fit and job performance is statistically supported. This study calls for further research on person-job fit as determinant of job performance.

Finally, the innovative behaviour is clarified to be the most significant predictor of job performance. It warrants further investigation into this promising factor on job performance.

5.1 Managerial implications

Results of the study have confirmed the role of employee well-being, person job-fit and innovative behaviour as mediators in relation to the inclusive leadership and job performance. The inclusive leader­ship takes a decisive role in shaping the working cli­mate, thereby fostering managers to be more attentive to their leadership practices (Vinarski-Peretz & Car- meli 2011). Providing sufficient training, performance evaluation, and rewarding policies are feasible approaches to advance employee well-being, person job-fit, and innovative behaviour (Choi et al. 2015).

First, to maintain a good performance, employees’ well-being should be enhanced by making them feel valued. Proper feedbacks and praise would strengthen employees’ process of self-development. Adequate resources (tools, budget, information) and immediate training (coaching and mentoring) on improving employee knowledge and skills would be helpful as guidelines for them to well accomplish the assigned tasks (Hamid & Yahya 2011).

Second, as an important mediator, person-job fit should be managed effectively. Managers must care­fully identify employees’ strengths that are compat­ible with the required qualities of the job and company’s core value, which in turn unleashes their potential to generate better performance. During working processes, “managers’ constructive feed­backs and appropriate mentoring” make a substantial contribution to enhancing employees’ perspective on person-job fit (Choi et al. 2017).

Last, innovative behaviour’s role in heightening job performance must be centralized. Managerial practices would shape a supportive working environ­ment where employees can actualize innovative ideas (Carmeli et al. 2010) such as being receptive to employees’ creative approaches and willing to take any risk that is entailed in. This cultivates independ­ence and confidence in employees to commit them­selves to high performance.

6 CONCLUSION

The findings have emphasized the influence of the inclusive leadership on job performance through the mediating role of employee well-being, person-job fit, and innovative behaviour. The study added to the literature suggesting that in order to enhance these factors, the inclusive leadership practices plays a crucial role. In addition, the results also highlighted the potential mechanism of these effects on forming a motivating working climate for employees to achieve better performance. Investigating innovative behaviour as a significant driver of job performance opens a promising path for future research of inclu­sive leadership and job performance.

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APPENDIX1 MEASURES

(Continued)

APPENDIX 1. (Cont.)