Author(s)

Jiashuai Lyu ¹, Luyuan Yu ¹

Affiliation(s)

¹ School of Public Policy and Administration, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, Shaanxi, 710049, China

Corresponding Author

Jiashuai Lyu

ABSTRACT

In the new era, why should China weaken and eliminate the phenomenon of avoiding responsibility such as "not acting as an official" and "slow acting" that still exist in some parts of the governance, and become a key point in breaking the bottleneck of China's governance capacity leap. This study focuses on 225 civil servants and their main leaders, and uses hierarchical regression method to explore the impact and mechanism of responsible leadership on civil servants' tendency of avoiding responsibility. Research has found that: (1) responsible leadership has a negative impact on the tendency of avoiding responsibility; (2) Subjective responsibility, as an intrinsic motivation, plays a complete mediating role between responsible leadership and tendency of avoiding responsibility; (3) The subjective power distance significantly positively moderates the positive impact of responsible leadership on subjective sense of responsibility; (4) The objective power distance significantly negatively regulates the positive impact of responsible leadership on subjective sense of responsibility. These research results are not only conducive to enriching and expanding the theory of responsible leadership behavior and the impact of power distance in the public sector environment, but also have practical significance in curbing the potential tendency of civil servants to avoid responsibility.

KEYWORDS

Responsible leadership; The tendency of avoiding responsibility; Subjective sense of responsibility; Power distance

CITE THIS PAPER

Jiashuai Lyu, Luyuan Yu, A Study on the Influence of Responsible Leadership on Civil Servants' Tendency of Avoiding Responsibility. Information Systems and Economics (2023) Vol. 4: 29-40. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.23977/infse.2023.040404.

REFERENCES

[1] Cheng X L, Chen H H, Zheng M Y. Structural dimensions and scale development of responsible leadership in Chinese cultural contexts[J]. Journal of Management, 2021, 18(12):1780-1789.
[2] Liu S M, Liu J B. Responsible leadership and employee performance: social learning or theatrical performance? [J]. China Human Resource Development, 2017(01):23-30.
[3] Li X, Shi K, Wan J, Liu Y. Mechanisms of ethical leadership's influence on grassroots civil servants' suggestion and silent behavior-a mediated regulation model from the perspective of resource conservation and social exchange[J]. Soft Science, 2018, 32(01):78-82.
[4] Maak T, Pless N. Responsible leadership in a stakeholder society -a relational perspective [J]. Journal of Business Ethics, 2006, 66(1):99-115.
[5] Song J W, Sum Z Q, Wei J F, Peter J. Responsible leadership and corporate social capital building: A case study of Yihai Corporation[J]. Journal of Management, 2009, 6(07):988-994.
[6] Weaver R K. The Politics of Blame Avoidance [J]. Journal of Public Policy, 1986, 6(4):371-398.
[7] Liu R. Policy Failure and Blame Avoidance Mechanisms: The Paradox of Responsibility in the Process of Scientific and Democratization of Decision Making [J]. Zhejiang Social Science, 2020(11):34-41+156.
[8] Tian D H. The generation and governance of "inaction" to avoid responsibility [J]. People's Forum, 2020(Z1):68-69.
[9] Feng B. The subjective responsibility of Shanghai police and its related research [D]. East China Normal University, 2006.
[10] Watts L L, Buckley M R. A Dual-Processing Model of Moral Whistleblowing in Organizations [J]. Journal of Business Ethics, 2017, 146(3):1-15.
[11] Dorfman P W, Howell J P. Dimensions of national culture and effective leadership patterns Hofstede re-visited [J]. Advances in International Comparative Management, 1988, 10(3):127-150.
[12] Huang J. A study on the influence of power distance and organizational commitment on employees' innovation behavior [D]. Zhejiang University, 2019.
[13] Wang Y W, Ye J H, Li Y, Guo P F. The influence of authoritarian leadership on employees' innovative behavior: mechanisms and contexts [J]. Innovation Science and Technology, 2021, 21(02):70-79. DOI:10.19345/j.cxkj.1671-0037.2021.02.008.
[14] Wen Q T, Guo R, Xia J M. Transformational leadership and collaborative innovation in cross-border teams - the mediating role of knowledge sharing and the moderating role of power distance[J]. Foreign Economics and Management, 2020, 42(02):17-29.
[15] Guo Y X, Su Y. The conceptual structure and scale of responsible leadership [J]. Technology Economics, 2017, 36(10):77-83.
[16] Xingling X, Chen P. Sector management [M]. Shanghai Translation Press, 2003.
[17] Ni X, Wang R. From Credit Claiming to Blame Avoidance: The Change of Government Officials’ Behavior [J]. CASS Journal of Political Science, 2017(2):10.
[18] Leong C, Howlett M. On credit and blame: disentangling the motivations of public policy decision-making behavior [J]. Policy Sciences, 2017.

Sponsors, Associates, and Links

---

• Accounting, Auditing and Finance
  
  
• Industrial Engineering and Innovation Management
  
  
• Tourism Management and Technology Economy
  
  
• Journal of Computational and Financial Econometrics
  
  
• Financial Engineering and Risk Management
  
  
• Accounting and Corporate Management
  
  
• Social Security and Administration Management
  
  
• Population, Resources & Environmental Economics
  
  
• Statistics & Quantitative Economics
  
  
• Agricultural & Forestry Economics and Management
  
  
• Social Medicine and Health Management
  
  
• Land Resource Management
  
  
• Information, Library and Archival Science
  
  
• Journal of Human Resource Development
  
  
• Manufacturing and Service Operations Management
  
  
• Operational Research and Cybernetics