In the digital age, people’s interests are more differentiated than in earlier times, their needs are more diverse, and their communication radius is larger. Because people communicate with each other on digital platforms, they are virtualized; therefore, various risks are gradually superimposed. The characteristics of grassroots governance in the 21st century—such as diversification, dynamism, virtualization, risk accumulation, and compounded impacts—require governments to adapt their functions and workflow to rapid changes. Morrison and Phelps (1999) defined taking-charge behavior as employees voluntarily making constructive efforts to initiate functional organizational change in order to do their job more effectively. Typical taking-charge behaviors include streamlining redundant work processes, introducing new methods, and cutting through ineffective organizational rules. According to Chiaburu et al. (2013), taking-charge behavior is a change-oriented organizational citizenship behavior whereby the employee responds proactively and implements changes in work processes, products, and services. These behaviors can improve organizational resilience and long-term viability (Moon et al., 2008). Factors affecting employee taking-charge behavior can be understood from the perspective of individual or situational factors. Individual-level factors include individual traits, self-efficacy, mood, responsibility, and psychological privilege (Zeng et al., 2020). Situational factors include organizational support, social support, work characteristics, leadership style, and organizational atmosphere (Yan et al., 2019).

 

The personal style and work approach of leaders largely shape the organizational atmosphere and culture. By setting an example and actively promoting change, transformational leaders can create a favorable environment for the taking-charge behavior of grassroots civil servants. Transformational leaders combine charisma with inspirational appeal, reflecting the leader’s own capacity for change while influencing subordinates’ willingness to engage in similar behaviors (Bass, 1999). Charisma positions leaders as role models for their subordinates, and inspirational appeal enhances subordinates’ hope and confidence by presenting a compelling vision (Ribeiro et al., 2020), thereby stimulating their taking-charge behavior. This motivational approach encourages employees to be creative in solving problems and strive for the interests of the organization (Bass, 1999). In summary, transformational leadership actively drives change and removes institutional barriers, thus fostering a supportive organizational environment for grassroots civil servants to engage in taking-charge behavior. Thus, we proposed the following hypothesis:

Hypothesis 1: Transformational leadership will positively predict the taking-charge behavior of grassroots civil servants.

According to role identification theory, there is an identification–transformation process between motivation and behavior. Individuals first develop psychological motivation, integrate it into their attitude, and then make behavioral choices (Stryker & Burke, 2000). Since taking charge by grassroots civil servants is typically an extrarole behavior that lacks clear norms or evaluations, transformational leadership alone may not directly trigger such behavior. To effect taking-charge behavior, civil servants must internalize it as part of their role identity. Transformational leaders can guide their subordinate civil servants to perceive the necessity of change, then further shape subordinates’ attitude and preferences through motivation and focused attention (Shamir et al., 1993), helping them incorporate taking charge into their role understanding.

 

Civil servants with strong, compared to weak, role identity are more likely to take charge (Poulsen, 2007). In short, we anticipated that civil servants would form motivation under the influence of transformational leadership, integrate it into their cognition and attitude, and develop stable proactive behavior. We proposed the following hypotheses on the basis of this process:

Hypothesis 2a: Role identity will positively predict grassroots civil servants’ taking-charge behavior.

Hypothesis 2b: Role identity will mediate the relationship between transformational leadership and grassroots civil servants’ taking-charge behavior.

The work tasks of grassroots civil servants are diverse and clearly defined. However, when the volume of tasks becomes excessive or the employee lacks adequate resource support, the workload exceeds individual capacity. Excessive workload can be divided into quantitative (e.g., too many tasks, insufficient time) and qualitative (e.g., tasks that are complex, high-risk, and/or beyond one’s experience and ability) types (Mishra et al., 2017). As a sustained source of stress, excessive workload demands continuous extra effort from civil servants (Schaufeli & Bakker, 2004), depleting their resources and diverting attention from core responsibilities, thereby hindering the performance of extrarole behaviors, such as taking charge (Lu & Guy, 2014).

 

Prolonged overload not only affects the physical and mental health of grassroots civil servants but also weakens their sense of job identity (Misra et al., 2021). Even if job responsibilities align with personal career goals, ongoing pressure from excessive workload may lead to disengagement or passive resistance. An excessive workload may also exert a crowding-out effect by offsetting the positive impact of external motivators, such as transformational leadership. Civil servants’ role identity is shaped by their subjective perception of job intensity and resource availability. Under a high-intensity workload with insufficient support, even a favorable organizational climate may fail to elicit identification with change-oriented responsibilities. Instead, under these dual pressures, burnout and rejection may result, ultimately undermining the civil servant’s sense of accountability. Thus, we proposed the following hypotheses:

Hypothesis 3a: Excessive workload will negatively predict taking-charge behavior among grassroots civil servants.

Hypothesis 3b: Excessive workload will negatively predict role identity among grassroots civil servants.

Hypothesis 3c: Excessive workload will negatively moderate the relationship between transformational leadership and grassroots civil servants’ role identity.

Psychological capital comprises the dimensions of hope, resilience, self-efficacy, and optimism and is a crucial driver of individuals’ positive work attitude and performance outcomes (Chen et al., 2019). Positive psychology suggests that psychological states such as optimism, confidence, hope, and resilience are critical yet often overlooked factors, distinct from intellectual, physical, or social resources (Da et al., 2020). Regarding optimism, some scholars view it as an explanatory style, attributing negative events to external and unstable causes (Smith et al., 2021); others consider it a personality trait, whereby optimistic individuals believe good things are more likely to happen than are bad things (Yeşilkaya & Yıldız, 2023). In the current study optimism refers to grassroots civil servants’ positive evaluation of external stimuli, and the belief that they are key contributors to outcomes, thus promoting taking-charge behavior. More optimistic civil servants are more likely to engage in positive attribution, seek solutions, and pursue process innovations (Adikara & Soetjipto, 2021). However, Du and Yan (2022) indicated that excessive optimism can lead to an optimism bias, which may hinder responsiveness to environmental changes and weaken the impact of external incentives on role identity. Prolonged excessive optimism may result in underestimating real challenges, falling into idealism, neglecting environmental changes, and fostering a conservative mindset. Overly optimistic civil servants may rely too heavily on their abilities and instincts, downplaying the significance of change, assuming that a positive mindset alone will ensure success, and failing to recognize the necessity of change, which becomes a psychological barrier to reform efforts. Therefore, we proposed the following hypotheses:

Hypothesis 4a: Optimism and taking-charge behavior will have an inverted U-shaped relationship.

Hypothesis 4b: Optimism will negatively moderate the relationship between role identity and taking-charge behavior among grassroots civil servants.

Hypothesis 4c: There will be a moderated mediation effect, whereby role identity mediates the link between transformational leadership and taking-charge behavior among grassroots civil servants, with workload negatively moderating the relationship between transformational leadership and grassroots civil servants’ role identity, while optimism negatively moderates the relationship between role identity and grassroots civil servants’ taking-charge behavior.

We conducted a survey with grassroots civil servants who were employed in county-level departments located in Shaanxi Province, China, including the cities of Xi’an and Weinan. The departments included environmental protection, health, and land management, all of which are notably influenced by leadership style and have a clear need for taking-charge behavior (Chang & Brewer, 2023), facilitating observation and study. To reduce common source bias, we also collected data from Master of Public Administration students at Xi’an University of Finance and Economics.

 

The survey occurred in two phases: April 13–20, 2023, and mid-July to early September 2023. We distributed 500 survey forms. After excluding invalid responses that showed excessive selection of a single option, insufficient time spent on answering items, or failure to complete the answers, 465 valid samples were retained (93% response rate). Among the respondents, 270 (58.1%) were men and 195 (41.9%) were women. The mean age was 32.27 years (SD = 8.63, range = 22–65). As regards education level, 295 (63.4%) had a bachelor’s degree or higher academic qualification, 144 (31.0%) individuals held a high school diploma, and 26 (5.6%) had completed elementary school.

 

We obtained ethical approval from the Northwest University Ethics Committee (221218001), and the procedures used in the study adhered to the tenets of the Declaration of Helsinki. We obtained informed consent from all participants to ensure transparency, and assured them of the confidentiality of their responses. Participation was voluntary and anonymous, with each participant receiving a gift worth CNY 30 (USD 4.30).

Following the method used by Xu et al. (2024), two bilingual researchers working in the fields of psychology and public administration translated the survey items from English into Chinese to maintain their original meaning. For the transformational leadership style and optimism dimensions, respondents rated items on a 6-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree to 6 = strongly agree). Workload, taking-charge behavior, and role identity were measured with a 5-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree).

 

We measured transformational leadership using the scale developed by Bass (1999), which includes eight items (e.g., “My leader demonstrates strong confidence in completing tasks”).  Cronbach’s alpha in this study was .83.

 

We measured the taking-charge behavior of grassroots civil servants using a scale developed by Morrison and Phelps (1999), which consists of 10 items (e.g., “I often use optimized work methods”). Cronbach’s alpha was .88 in this study.

 

We measured role identity with the scale devised by Stryker and Burke (2000), which contains three items (e.g., “I will work extra hard to fulfil the responsibilities of this role”). Cronbach’s alpha was .76 in this study.

 

We assessed workload using the scale developed by Perkasa and Martin (2021), which includes five items (e.g., “My job requires me to work quickly”). Cronbach’s alpha was .70 in our study.

 

We measured optimism using the scale developed by Luthans and Youssef-Morgan (2017), which includes six items (e.g., “I usually believe in positive outcomes when facing uncertainty at work”). In our study Cronbach’s alpha was .64.

We controlled for six demographic variables: gender, age, level of education, political affiliation, administrative level, and monthly income.

We performed a Pearson correlation analysis to test the relationships among key variables, including means, standard deviations, and correlations. Table 1 shows there were positive correlations between transformational leadership and the role identity of civil servants, between transformational leadership and taking-charge behavior among civil servants, and between transformational leadership and the optimism of civil servants. The correlation between transformational leadership and workload was nonsignificant. These results aligned with our expectations.

We used SPSS 22.0 to conduct linear regression modeling of the main effects, calculating 95% confidence interval (CIs) and controlling for gender, age, level of education, political affiliation, administrative level, and monthly income. As shown in Model 2 of Table 2, transformational leadership positively predicted taking-charge behavior among grassroots civil servants, 95% CI [0.563, 0.739], supporting Hypothesis 1. In Model 3 of Table 2, role identity positively predicted taking-charge behavior, 95% CI [0.550, 0.789], supporting Hypothesis 2a. Using SPSS and Model 21 of the PROCESS v. 4.2 macro (Hayes, 2018), we tested the mediation and moderation hypotheses with 5,000 resamples and 95% CIs. A bootstrapping analysis of role identity as a mediator between transformational leadership and taking-charge behavior indicated there was a significant mediation effect, supporting Hypothesis 2b (see Table 2). As shown in Model 4 of Table 2, workload negatively predicted taking-charge behavior, 95% CI [−0.181, −0.013], supporting Hypothesis 3a and suggesting that heavy workloads hinder this behavior among civil servants. Workload also negatively predicted role identity, 95% CI [−0.176, −0.011], as shown in Model 9 of Table 2. This indicated that a heavy workload diminished the effect of role identity on taking-charge behavior, supporting Hypothesis 3b.

Workload negatively moderated the relationship between transformational leadership and role identity, β = −.104, p < .01; 95% CI [−0.192, −0.015]. A simple slope analysis (see Figure 2) indicated that at a low workload (M − 1 SD), the effect of transformational leadership on role identification was .304, decreasing to .236 at mean and to .168 at a high workload (M + 1 SD), thus supporting Hypothesis 3c.

Following the same procedure, we examined the moderating effect of optimism between role identity and taking-charge behavior. Results are shown in Table 3 (nonsignificant results are not depicted). Optimism negatively moderated this relationship, β = −.264, p < .001; 95% CI [−0.364, −0.164]. However, in the path from transformational leadership to taking-charge behavior through role identity, optimism did not have a significant mediated moderation effect, β = −.015, 95% CI [−0.003, −0.037].

To assess potential nonlinear relationships, we included optimism as a squared term in the model. Results showed a significant positive relationship between optimism and taking-charge behavior for both the linear and squared terms (β = .051, p < .001), indicating that there was not an inverted U-shaped relationship. Therefore, Hypothesis 4a was not supported. A simple slope analysis showed that at low levels of optimism (M − 1 SD), the predictive effect of role identity on taking-charge behavior was .235, which decreased to .133 at mean, and when optimism was high (M + 1 SD), the effect was not significant (see Table 4). These results partially supported Hypothesis 4b, in which we proposed that optimism would negatively moderate the relationship between role identity and taking-charge behavior. That is to say, the negative moderating effect of optimism on the relationship between role identity and taking-charge behavior served as a moderator at low and moderate levels of optimism, but not for high levels of optimism. In Hypothesis 4c, we predicted that role identity would mediate the relationship between transformational leadership and grassroots civil servants’ taking-charge behavior, and that workload would negatively moderate the relationship between transformational leadership and role identity, while optimism would negatively moderate the relationship between role identity and taking-charge behavior (see Figure 3). However, the results in Figures 2 and 3 were not significant at high levels of optimism; thus, the full dual moderated mediation effect we had proposed was not supported.

Overall, we observed the anticipated outcomes in this study. First, we found that transformational leadership positively predicted the taking-charge behavior of grassroots civil servants, which is consistent with the findings of Wen et al. (2021). Second, we found role identity played a mediating role in the relationship of transformational leadership with the taking-charge behavior of grassroots civil servants, which is consistent with the finding of Perkasa and Martin (2021). Role identity also positively predicted grassroots civil servants’ taking-charge behavior. Third, we observed a negative moderating effect of workload on the relationship between transformational leadership style and role identity, that is, having a heavy workload weakened grassroots civil servants’ identification with their role. This is in line with the finding of Misra et al. (2021). Fourth, we found a partial negative moderating effect of optimism on the relationship between role identity and taking-charge behavior; that is, at low and moderate levels of optimism it served as a moderator, but for participants who had high optimism, the effect was not significant. These results are also largely in line with those of Bormann (2024), who expressed the belief that the relationship between optimism and taking-charge behavior may not be simply one of enhancement or suppression. Finally, our results did not support the proposed inverted U-shaped relationship between optimism and taking-charge behavior of grassroots civil servants, probably because of the implicit nature of affective factors. For example, some respondents may conceal their true intentions and personality in order to meet the public’s expectations of civil servants. However, this does not mean that the proposed inverted U-shaped relationship between the two variables does not exist, and research in more sociocultural contexts and corporations is needed for further validation of the dataset. Moreover, the overall hypothesis that role identity would mediate the relationship between transformational leadership and grassroots civil servants’ taking-charge behavior was supported. Thus, we have provided a new research perspective for understanding and analyzing how transformational leadership influences the taking-charge behavior of grassroots civil servants.

Our theoretical contributions are threefold. First, we developed an explanatory framework for this study by applying role identification theory, psychological capital theory, and the stimulus–organism–response model to elucidate the mechanisms through which transformational leadership influences the taking-charge behavior of grassroots civil servants. The model comprised transformational leadership and civil servants’ workload as stressors, role identity and optimism as the organism, and taking-charge behavior as the response. The partial validation of the overall model provides a theoretical basis for understanding and analyzing the factors and mechanisms affecting this behavior. However, the factors and mechanisms can be further studied. Second, we found that optimism negatively moderated the relationship between Chinese civil servants’ role identity and taking-charge behavior. This finding not only advances understanding of how optimism, as a dimension of psychological capital, influences individual behavior, but also deepens insight into the relationship between the willingness to take charge and actual behavior, offering guidance for more precise design of strategies to encourage and spur people on to engage in behaviors such as taking charge. Third, our findings reinforce a behaviorist approach within the field of grassroots governance studies.

As the results of this study indicate, transformational leadership can promote taking-charge behavior among subordinates. Therefore, leaders in public organizations need to actively engage in creating a transformative organizational atmosphere. Furthermore, we recommend the thorough implementation of policies aimed at ensuring that the workload for grassroots staff is not excessive by clearly defining their job responsibilities to prevent irresponsible delegation of authority by supervisors and managers, as well as preventing unreasonable downward pressure on tasks. Finally, in China the environmental protection, health, and land management departments in which the participants in our study were employed are all key areas that attract significant attention from citizens, the government, and the media, making them prone to various sudden public opinion incidents. Therefore, for the negative regulatory effect of optimism, civil servants should receive more training in crisis awareness to prevent them from becoming overly optimistic and losing their initiative for change. For instance, more training in emergency management scenarios and public crisis case studies could be conducted to enhance awareness and sense of urgency regarding unexpected situations.

There are two main limitations in this study. First, regarding the implicit attitude of grassroots civil servants, some with heightened accountability awareness may have chosen not to express themselves with complete honestly (i.e., they may acknowledge their shortcomings while verbally committing to reform and accountability) because voicing genuine thoughts risks violating citizens’ expectations of their role. As a self-protection mechanism, they may have been reluctant to speak truthfully when issues involved their personal interests. This could have resulted in bias in the survey as certain responses did not accurately reflect the behavioral motivations of the individual, skewing the final results. Second, although we made extensive efforts through various channels to collect the data required for empirical analysis, we inevitably missed some potential samples and could not encompass a wide variety of cases. Therefore, future studies could enrich the content, context, and methodologies to further reveal the mechanisms behind grassroots civil servants’ taking-charge behavior.

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