Regulatory focus as a mediator of the influence of initiating structure and servant leadership on employee behavior.

TLDR

The study tests whether employees’ regulatory focus mediates the effect of leadership styles on workplace behavior. The authors developed and preliminarily validated the Work Regulatory Focus (WRF) Scale to measure employees’ regulatory focus. Results show that prevention focus mediates the link between initiating structure and in‑role performance and deviant behavior, while promotion focus mediates the link between servant leadership and helping and creative behavior, and each leadership style uniquely predicts distinct outcomes even after accounting for the other style and dispositional factors.

Abstract

In this research, the authors test a model in which the regulatory focus of employees at work mediates the influence of leadership on employee behavior. In a nationally representative sample of 250 workers who responded over 2 time periods, prevention focus mediated the relationship of initiating structure to in-role performance and deviant behavior, whereas promotion focus mediated the relationship of servant leadership to helping and creative behavior. The results indicate that even though initiating structure and servant leadership share some variance in explaining other variables, each leadership style incrementally predicts disparate outcomes after controlling for the other style and dispositional tendencies. A new regulatory focus scale, the Work Regulatory Focus (WRF) Scale, also was developed and initially validated for this study. Implications for the results and the WRF Scale are discussed.