Paradoxical leadership is associated with positive behavioral outcomes. However, the link between paradoxical leadership and voice behavior is not comprehensively studied in extant literature. This paper builds a theoretical model to reveal how paradoxical leadership facilitates promotive and prohibitive voice behavior of employees, drawing upon social cognitive theory and regulatory focus theory. We proposed a moderated mediation model that employees’ voice behavior is related to paradoxical leadership through self-efficacy and psychological safety. With data from 268 leader – employee pairs of questionnaires, this study conducted a structural equation model to test the conceptual framework. The results show that (a) leader’s paradoxical leadership related to employee’s promotive and prohibitive voice behaviors positively; (b) employee’s self-efficacy and psychological safety mediate the extent of effect the superior’s paradoxical leadership has on subordinate’s voice behavior; (c) the more obvious the subordinate’s promotion focus orientation, the stronger the mediating effect of self-efficacy; and (d) the more obvious the subordinate’s prevention focus orientation, the weaker the mediating effect of psychological safety. These conclusions reveal the influencing mechanism of a superior’s paradoxical leadership on a subordinate’s voice behavior. It expands paradoxical leadership-related studies, enriches studies related to the field of “leader – employee voice behavior,” and highlights the relationship between the duality of paradoxical leadership behavior on employees with different regulatory focus orientation with a new perspective.

We theorized and tested a leader-member perspective beyond the existing studies in paradoxical leadership and employee voice behavior. We proposed that paradoxical leadership influences employees’ voice behavior through psychological safety and self-efficacy. We also theorized that team size influences an extent to which the subordinates internalize their self-efficacy and psychological safety to exhibit proactive behavior. In a longitudinal study conducted on 155 subordinates and 96 supervisors in China, we found that when leaders adopt paradoxical behavior, employees are more likely to engage into promotive voice behavior; however, employees’ prohibitive voice behavior is reduced when their leaders adopt paradoxes in leadership behavior. Additionally, psychological safety mediates the relationship between paradoxical leadership and promotive voice behavior. Further, team size has significant interaction effects with psychological safety on promotive voice behavior.

Recently, research on the leadership potential of employees has gradually attracted the attention of scholars. However, further exploration is required to better understand the upward influence of employee’s leadership potential on their leaders. This study examined the mechanisms behind the impact of employee’s leadership potential on leadership ostracism behavior. Moreover, the mediating role of leader’s envy and the moderating role of employee’s political skills in the relationship between employee’s leadership potential and leadership ostracism behavior were investigated. The results of an empirical analysis of 221 employee–leader pairs, studied over multiple periods, are as follows: employee’s leadership potential had a significant positive impact on leader’s envy and leadership ostracism behavior; leader’s envy had a significant positive impact on leadership ostracism behavior; and leader’s envy mediated the relationship between leadership potential and leadership ostracism behavior. In addition, employee’s political skills negatively moderated the indirect effect of leadership potential on leadership ostracism behavior through leader’s envy. The leadership potential of employees with more political skills appeared to have less influence on organizational ostracism via leader’s envy. This study explored the “dark-side” of employee’s leadership potential by understanding its impact on their leaders; the findings have theoretical and practical significance for companies.

The current study investigates the impact of fear related to coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) disease on situational humor, and also on social networking sites (SNS) usage as a mediator. Furthermore, this study investigates the impact of fear-related COVID-19 disease on situation humorviaSNS usage, focusing on the gender perspective of university students. This study also examined the impact of fear related to COVID-19 disease on situational humor in students from various degree programs, such as BS and MS. For this cross-sectional study, data were collected from 24 different Pakistani universities using purposive sampling between December 2020 and May 2021. This study used social media platforms like WhatsApp, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter (and also email) to collect data online. According to the findings of this study, fear related to COVID-19 disease was found to be significantly negatively related to situational humor and SNS usage, whereas SNS usage was positively related to situational humor. The findings also revealed that SNS usage is a key mediator in the relationship between fear related to COVID-19 disease and situational humor. In addition, male university students used more SNS and had a higher situational humor response than female university students, and female university students reported a higher fear related to COVID-19 disease. This study provided useful findings of the impact of fear related to COVID-19 disease on situational humor among students in various academic programs, such as bachelor's program and master's program.

While prior literature indicated the positive outcomes of successful executive successions for both individuals and organizations, we still know little about the influencing factors and mechanisms of successful executive successions from the individual perspectives of newly hired executives. As prior research of executive succession suggested to consider the contextual change on the entire duration of executive employment, we adopted a qualitative research design to explore important experiences in the process of career development after an executive, who was newly hired from outside the company, joined a new organization with a dynamic perspective. Our goal was to help newly hired executives realize their career development process with key tasks and core competencies in distinct stages, in order to achieve sustainable career development in a new enterprise. There are also implications for enhancing process-oriented career development research and advancing career-development managerial practices.