Leadership Research Summary:
- Although high-performance work practices (HPWPs) have been shown to increase organizational performance and improve employee attitudes, it still remains unclear how they impact interpersonal relations in the workplace. While some argue that HPWPs lead to better interpersonal relations, others fear that HPWPs may increase competition and uncivil and abusive behaviors. In response to this, our aim is to examine whether and when HPWPs are associated with increased levels of competition and thereby more incivility. Given recent interest in how HR practices and leadership may interact to produce certain outcomes, we study laissez-faire leadership as a possible moderator.
- A survey was conducted in Belgium (n = 374), and a mediated moderation analysis using SEM performed using Mplus. The results suggest that in the absence of laissez-faire leadership, HPWPs are associated with less incivility, thus suggesting better interpersonal relations. However, the results also show that HPWPs may lead to increased competition and thereby somewhat more incivility, under conditions of laissez-faire leadership. The results thus point to the importance of studying interactions between HR practices and leadership in trying to understand employee outcomes. In terms of practical implications, the results suggest that investing in HPWPs may reduce incivility and thereby improve relationship wellbeing. However, HPWPs need to be combined with active leadership to avoid undesirable negative consequences.
Leadership Research Implications and Findings:
- While earlier research has largely focused on identifying the beneficial and potentially detrimental effects of HPWPs, this study provides preliminary insights into mechanisms that may alleviate or offset some of the detrimental consequences. The study draws attention to the need to combine HPWPs with active leadership, that is, the opposite of laissez-faire leadership. If an organization relies on HPWPs but the immediate supervisor engages in laissez-faire leadership, that is passive leadership, the results of this study suggest HPWPs may lead to incivility through increased competition.
- Active leadership may take many different forms. Although our study does not provide precise insights into the leadership activities needed to ensure that negative consequences do not arise, our data point to the importance of a leader who is involved, who is present, and takes responsibility. Based on the classic meta-analysis by Judge and Piccolo (2004) we know that laissez-faire has an especially high negative correlation with transformational leadership (r = −0.65), the latter involving idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, and individualized consideration (Bass and Avolio, 1994). Given the high negative correlation with laissez-faire, it would therefore seem logical to assume that transformational leadership would be likely to be an active form leadership that could prevent the negative consequences from arising. However, it is possible that transactional leadership, building on contingent reward and management by exception, could be enough to signal that the leader is involved, present, and takes responsibility.
- Overall, the results point to the importance of coupling HPWPs with active leadership to offset potentially undesired side effects. It is also important to note that the negative effects were already manifest under relatively low levels of laissez-faire leadership, at the point where respondents neither agreed nor disagreed with the laissez-faire items and chose the neutral mid-point. This would depict a neither truly active or passive leadership style. This suggests that truly rather than somewhat active leadership is needed to counterbalance the demands imposed by HPWPs.