With the development of economic globalization and continual progression of science and technology, enterprises are facing an increasingly complex business environment, and an increase in the conflicts and contradictions that they need to address. Given this background, a single leadership style is no longer suitable for the needs of enterprise development. Luo, Zhao, Han, et al. (2016) proposed that ambidextrous leadership, which is a new leadership style comprising two complementary leadership behaviors (Rosing et al., 2011), can best deal with these conflicts and contradictions. Ambidextrous leaders, who can judge the effectiveness and applicability of their behavior according to the situation, have paradox cognition and the ability to coordinate complementary leadership behaviors (Schreuders & Legesse, 2012; Smith & Tushman, 2005). With this frontier topic in the fields of organizational ambidexterity and leadership, ambidextrous leadership researchers have outlined the requirement for contemporary leadership with contradictory and competitive demands in an uncertain context (Luo, Zhao, Han, et al., 2016). However, researchers on ambidextrous leadership outcome variables, such as Luo, Hu, et al. (2016), and Luo, Zhao, and Zhong (2016) have mostly focused on the field of creativity and innovation, and have given scant attention to outcome variables in fields such as voice and career development. Thus, it is vital to explore the effect of ambidextrous leadership on outcome variables in other fields.

Voice is an extrarole behavior of interpersonal communication in which employees actively put forward constructive opinions to improve their work or the current organizational situation (Van Dyne & LePine, 1998). As the competition facing the organization becomes more and more fierce, these constructive suggestions help the organization gain a competitive advantage. Research has previously shown that leader behavior is a key antecedent of employee voice (Chamberlin et al., 2017). However, scholars have mostly focused on the effect of a single (vs. ambidextrous) leadership style on employee voice (Duan et al., 2017; Lapointe & Vandenberghe, 2018; Zhu et al., 2015). Therefore, I explored the effect of ambidextrous leadership on employee voice to address this gap in the literature.

A critical factor that enables leadership style to influence employees is employee identification (Sluss et al., 2012). Therefore, I explored the mediating role of leader identification in the relationship between ambidextrous leadership and employee voice from the perspective of social identity theory. Also, because flexible thinking and cognitive mode are beneficial to employee behavior (Luo, Zhao, & Zhong, 2016), I expected that employees’ cognitive flexibility would moderate the relationship between leader identification and employee voice, allowing for further investigation of the boundary conditions of ambidextrous leadership affecting employee voice.

Literature Review and Development of Hypotheses

Ambidextrous Leadership and Employee Voice

From the perspective of routine practice, I treated ambidextrous leadership as a set of transformational and transactional leadership styles (Schreuders & Legesse, 2012), and proposed that, as a combination of their characteristics, ambidextrous leadership can motivate employee voice. Ambidextrous leaders encourage employees’ innovative behavior and trial-and-error approach, to strengthen their confidence and internal motivation to engage in extrarole behaviors (Luo, Hu, et al., 2016).

The safety and efficacy of voice are considered crucial factors in employees’ decision about whether to engage in this extrarole behavior (Morrison et al., 2011). The quality of the leader–employee relationship is a key indicator of employees’ judgment of the safety and efficacy of voice, that is, in a high-quality relationship, employees are more willing to use voice (Ashford et al., 1998). Ambidextrous leaders adopt different leadership strategies in different situations. For example, transactional leaders focus on leader–follower exchange, contingent rewards, and management-by-exception, whereas transformational leaders emphasize inspirational motivation and intellectual stimulation (Bass, 1999; von Krogh et al., 2012). When there is high leader–employee economic exchange, a leader is more likely to adopt transactional leadership and maintain high-quality relationships by satisfying employees’ external demands, such as expectations and rewards (Epitropaki & Martin, 2013). When there is high leader–employee affective exchange, a leader is more likely to adopt transformational leadership and maintain high-quality relationships by stimulating employees’ internal motivation, using role modeling and sharing vision statements, thus promoting employees’ voice. Therefore, I proposed the following hypothesis:
Hypothesis 1: Ambidextrous leadership will be positively related to employee voice.

Mediating Role of Leader Identification

Leader identification refers to the extent to which employees define themselves according to their relationship with their leader (Pratt, 1998). When employees integrate their perceptions of the leader into their self-concept, they produce a sense of leader identification (Sluss et al., 2012). Ambidextrous leadership can generate leader identification among their employees. According to social identity theory (Tajfel & Turner, 2010), ambidextrous leaders’ personal charisma leads employees to identify with their behaviors and values (Zhao & Jiang, 2018). Ambidextrous leaders’ transformational leadership gives employees a positive impression as the leader respects the employees and authorizes them to solve problems in their work with new methods and measures, inspires their vision, and manages them benevolently. As this style of leadership makes employees feel good about the leader, and wins the employees’ respect and trust for the leader, it is easy for employees to accept and identify with the leader’s values. Ambidextrous leaders’ transactional leadership indicates the striving for direction of employees by formulating and strictly implementing organizational rules and regulations, clearly assigning work roles and tasks to employees, and rewarding them when they complete their tasks. In general, as employees are influenced by ambidextrous leaders’ behavioral style each day, they identify with and support their leaders’ behaviors and values step by step. When leaders’ values are grounded in employees’ self-concept, employees have a deep sense of dependence on and trust in leaders, thus forming leader identification. Previous empirical results have also shown that ambidextrous leadership has a significant positive impact on leader identification (Zhao & Jiang, 2018).

As employees with strong (vs. weak) leader identification are more eager to maintain a good relationship with leaders, they not only work well within the scope of their duties, but also put their energy into extrarole behaviors (e.g., voice behavior) to meet the leader’s expectations (Chang & Johnson, 2011). Previous researchers have shown that leader identification predicts employee voice and mediates the relationships between transformational leadership and employee voice (Liu et al., 2010), between ethical leadership and employee voice (Zhu et al., 2015), and between inclusive leadership and employee voice (Guo et al., 2020). Therefore, I proposed the following hypothesis:
Hypothesis 2: Leader identification will mediate the relationship between ambidextrous leadership and employee voice.

Moderating Role of Cognitive Flexibility

As a core aspect of cognition, cognitive flexibility refers to individuals’ basic competence to assess and adapt to ongoing psychological operations, and to coordinate the allocation of cognitive processes appropriately in dynamic decision-making environments (Crone et al., 2004). Cognitive flexibility comprises three dimensions: awareness of options and alternatives in any given situation, willingness to adapt to the situation, and self-efficacy in being flexible in all situations (Martin & Anderson, 1998). Individuals with high cognitive flexibility are willing to encounter unfamiliar situations and to adapt their behavior to meet contextual needs (Martin & Anderson, 1998), and are also confident in their ability to behave efficaciously (Bandura, 1977). Individuals using voice need to not only find the problem and its root cause, but also propose practical and innovative solutions, which is not easy for employees (Van Dyne et al., 2008). Employees with high cognitive flexibility, flexible thinking, and high confidence are likely to find organizational problems and work out solutions, and to express their views and suggestions to their leaders with whom they identify. Employees with low cognitive flexibility, rigid thinking, and low confidence are likely to find it difficult to find organizational problems and, thus, are likely to be unwilling to express their views and suggestions to their leaders with whom they identify. Therefore, I proposed the following hypothesis:
Hypothesis 3: Cognitive flexibility will positively moderate the relationship between leader identification and employee voice, such that this relationship will be stronger for employees with higher (vs. lower) cognitive flexibility.

I further assumed, on the basis of Hypotheses 2 and 3, that employees with high (vs. low) cognitive flexibility would be more likely to recognize their direct supervisors’ ambidextrous leadership, thus enhancing their leader identification so that they engage in more voice behavior. Employee leader identification can then more effectively convey the effect of ambidextrous leadership on voice behavior. As it is difficult for employees with low cognitive flexibility to understand their leader’s ambidextrous leadership, their leader identification is also low. Therefore, I proposed the following hypothesis:
Hypothesis 4: Cognitive flexibility will positively moderate the mediating effect of leader identification in the relationship between ambidextrous leadership and employee voice, such that this mediating effect will be stronger for employees with higher (vs. lower) cognitive flexibility.

The theoretical model is shown in Figure 1.

Method

Participants and Procedure

I first contacted the human resource managers of knowledge-intensive business services enterprises in Henan, China, to invite them to participate in this study. After I had explained the purpose of the study, five enterprises agreed to take part. I then distributed 50 paper-and-pencil surveys to each enterprise and the human resource managers distributed these to employees, who responded voluntarily and anonymously. Upon completion surveys were returned directly to me. I collected data from 250 employees, and after I had deleted survey responses with the same option selected for several consecutive items, there were 208 valid responses, for an effective response rate of 83.2%.

Of the participants, 113 (54.3%) were men and 95 (45.7%) were women; regarding age, 41 (19.7%) were aged 25 years or under, 110 (52.9%) were aged between 26 and 35 years, 45 (21.6%) were aged between 36 and 45 years, and 12 (5.8%) were aged 46 years or over. Regarding level of education, 37 (17.8%) had a senior high school degree or lower qualification, 118 (56.7%) had a college diploma or bachelor’s degree, and 53 (25.5%) held a master’s degree. As regards job position ranking, 126 (60.6%) were regular employees, 58 (27.9%) were first-line managers, and 24 (11.5%) were middle or senior managers. In terms of organizational tenure, 65 (31.3%) had worked for the firm for 2 years or less, 104 (50%) for 3 to 5 years, 29 (13.9%) for 6 to 10 years, and 10 (4.8%) for more than 10 years.

Measures

Participants assessed all items on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree.

Ambidextrous Leadership
Drawing on the perspective of routine practice, I followed previous empirical researchers (Schreuders & Legesse, 2012; Zhao & Jiang, 2018) and treated transformational and transactional leadership as a set of leadership styles to measure ambidextrous leadership. From this perspective, Y. X. Chen et al. (2006) developed an eight-item transformational leadership scale in the Chinese context. I measured transformational leadership using seven of the eight items with high factor loadings. Items were divided across two dimensions: idealized influence (three items, e.g., “My leader shows determination in accomplishing goals”) and charisma (four items, e.g., “My leader depicts an inspiring future for everyone”).

Transactional Leadership
I measured transactional leadership using a five-item scale developed by Bass and Avolio (1995), comprising the two dimensions of contingent rewards (three items, e.g., “My leader indicates to their subordinates what they will get in return for completing the expected task”) and exception management (two items, e.g., “My leader pays attention to irregularities, exceptions, or deviations from the expected standard”). Two English teachers who work in the School of Foreign Languages at my university translated this scale into Chinese using the parallel blind technique (Behling & Law, 2000). I used the same method of translation for all the scales that were translated into Chinese for use in my study. Cronbach’s alphas for the transformational and transactional leadership scales were .74, and 79, respectively.

Leader Identification
I measured leader identification with a seven-item scale (Shamir et al., 1998). A sample item is “My boss is the role model for my actions.” Cronbach’s alpha was .82 in this study.

Employee Voice
Van Dyne and LePine (1998) developed a six-item scale to assess employee voice that has been widely adopted by Chinese scholars (Guo, 2016), and I also adopted it in this study. A sample item is “I would like to make recommendations concerning issues that affect this organization.” Cronbach’s alpha was .78 in this study.

Cognitive Flexibility
I used the 12-item Cognitive Flexibility Scale (Martin & Anderson, 1998) to assess the three dimensions of cognitive flexibility: awareness that in any given situation there are options and alternatives available, willingness to be flexible and adapt to the situation, and self-efficacy that one has the ability to be flexible. A sample item is “I can communicate an idea in many different ways.” Cronbach’s alpha was .86 in this study.

Control Variables
I controlled for the demographic variables of participants’ gender, age, level of education, job position ranking, and organizational tenure in this study, because of their potential impact on voice (Van Dyne & LePine, 1998; Zhu et al., 2015).

Data Analysis

I used SPSS version 20.0 to conduct descriptive statistical and hierarchical regression analyses, and Mplus version 7.0 for bootstrapping analysis to test the hypotheses.

Results

Preliminary Analysis

The descriptive statistical analysis results are shown in Table 1, where it can be seen that ambidextrous leadership was positively correlated with leader identification and employee voice, and that leader identification was positively correlated with employee voice. These results provide initial support for the hypotheses.

Hypothesis Testing

Hierarchical regression analysis results are shown in Table 2. As shown in Model 2, ambidextrous leadership was positively correlated with employee voice. Thus, Hypothesis 1 was supported.

I followed Baron and Kenny’s (1986) mediating effects test procedure. As shown in Model 7, ambidextrous leadership was positively correlated with leader identification. In Model 3 it can be seen that the positive effect of ambidextrous leadership on employee voice was significantly reduced after leader identification was entered into the regression model, but the positive effect of leader identification on employee voice was still significant. On the basis of Models 2, 3, and 7, leader identification played a partial mediating role in the relationship between ambidextrous leadership and employee voice. Thus, Hypothesis 2 was supported.

Further, as shown in Model 5, the interaction term of leader identification × cognitive flexibility was positively correlated with employee voice. Thus, Hypothesis 3 was supported.

Last, I used Edwards and Lambert’s (2007) method to test the moderated mediation effect. The bootstrapping analysis results show that the mediating effect between ambidextrous leadership and employee voice accounted for 41.4% of the total effect (see Table 3). For employees with high cognitive flexibility, the mediating effect of leader identification was significant, indirect effect = .046, 95%, confidence interval [0.026, 0.074]. For employees with low cognitive flexibility, the mediating effect of leader identification was not significant, indirect effect = .012, 95% confidence interval [-0.002, 0.026]. Thus, Hypothesis 4 was supported.

Discussion

Theoretical Implications

My results show that ambidextrous leadership was positively correlated with employee voice, and that leader identification mediated this relationship. The relationship between leadership style and employee voice has always been a key topic in organizational behavior research. However, previous researchers mainly focused on the effect of a single leadership style on employee voice (see, e.g., Duan et al., 2017; Lapointe & Vandenberghe, 2018; Zhu et al., 2015), and did not explore the transformation of leadership in different situations. I found that an ambidextrous leadership style with transactional characteristics, such as rewards and expectations, and with transformational characteristics, such as vision and care, can improve the quality of the leader–employee relationship, thus enhancing the safety and efficacy of employee voice (Morrison et al., 2011).

My findings address the lack of exploration of the antecedents of employee voice in leadership research and enrich previous results on the effect of ambidextrous leadership. For example, through analysis of data obtained from 232 employees working in food manufacturing enterprises in China, Guo et al. (2020) found that inclusive leadership was positively related to employees’ promotive and prohibitive voice behavior, that leader identification partially mediated the effect of inclusive leadership on employees’ promotive and prohibitive voice, and that power distance not only weakened the effect of inclusive leadership on leader identification and prohibitive voice, but also weakened the effect of leader identification on prohibitive voice.

The emphasis in ambidextrous leadership on adopting appropriate leadership behavior in different situations enhances employees’ identification with their leaders and, thus, promotes voice behavior. Previous researchers have found that leader identification mediates the relationships between transformational leadership and employee voice (Liu et al., 2010), between ethical leadership and employee voice (Zhu et al., 2015), and between inclusive leadership and employee voice (Guo et al., 2020). As my finding is consistent with these results, it further confirms that leader identification has an important mediating effect among the variables that influence the relationship of ambidextrous leadership and employee voice, and my finding deepens theoretical understanding of this relationship.

The results also show that cognitive flexibility positively moderated both the leader identification–employee voice relationship and the mediating effect of leader identification on the ambidextrous leadership–employee voice relationship. Thus, although leader identification promoted employee voice and mediated the positive effect of ambidextrous leadership on employee voice, the stimulation of employees’ cognitive flexibility was a necessary precursor. With a sample of 281 research and development employees in 16 new and high-technology enterprises in China, Luo, Zhao, and Zhong (2016) found that ambidextrous leadership had a significantly positive effect on employee innovative behavior, which was completely mediated by creative self-efficacy and leader–member exchange, and that cognitive flexibility positively moderated the relationships between ambidextrous leadership and creative self-efficacy, and between ambidextrous leadership and leader–member exchange. My findings enrich these previous results on the moderating mechanism of the effect of cognitive flexibility in the relationship of ambidextrous leadership and employee voice, and deepen understanding of the boundary conditions of the ambidextrous leadership–employee voice relationship.

Managerial Implications

My findings have important implications for enterprise management practices. First, enterprises should adopt effective measures to stimulate the maximum efficiency of ambidextrous leadership and promote employee voice. To be ambidextrous, leaders must ensure that they are combining transformational and transactional leadership styles. However, it is necessary to make clear to leaders the advantages and disadvantages of each leadership style at all times, and also they must have knowledge of how to weigh each of the two styles so that they complement each other. For example, to avoid abuse of power, every leader should formulate necessary rules and regulations when authorizing employees to solve problems using new methods and measures. When depicting a good organizational vision to employees, all leaders should be practical and pay attention to employee task performance, and give them corresponding material and spiritual rewards, such as providing wages according to the performance level of the employee (material reward), and presenting an award to recognize employees’ performance improvement (spiritual reward).

Second, leaders should authorize employees appropriately to be autonomous in their work in order to improve leader identification. I found that leader identification plays an important mediating role in the influence of ambidextrous leadership on employee voice. Therefore, stimulation of employee voice should be focused not only on the cultivation of ambidextrous leadership but also on employees’ leader identification. Organization managers should, therefore, grant employees appropriate power to show trust in them and promote greater autonomy. Also, in daily work, leaders should respect employees’ views and opinions, and enhance employees’ leader identification by introducing humanized management. This involves taking the human being as the core of business management, respecting human nature, meeting the rational demands of the human being, generating passion, arousing enthusiasm, and giving full play to the creative role of the human being. In contrast, abusive supervision and destructive leadership would not achieve these goals.

Third, using voice can be challenging for employees, who will face risks in their interpersonal workplace relationships and personal career development. Therefore, managers of organizations should establish a guarantee mechanism for employee voice, so that employees can perceive voice safety and efficacy. Various convenient voice channels should be established, such as a letterbox, telephone line, email address, and online message boards, so that the management can collect and analyze employee voice at any time and provide timely feedback.

Limitations and Directions for Future Research

There are some limitations in this study. First, the data were cross-sectional. Owing to limitations of time and sample matching, I measured the four variables at the same time point. Future researchers could adopt a longitudinal research design to better reveal the stable causality between variables. In addition, I used the general research situation of ambidextrous leadership and adopted the product term of two complementary leadership styles to represent ambidextrous leadership. However, the Chinese traditional idea of Yin-Yang involves a basic understanding that Yin and Yang are two patterns or interactive forces that coexist (H.-J. Chen et al., 2009). Many ideas on conflict management rely on this fundamental understanding (Du et al., 2011). Thus, I think that the Yin and Yang pattern lays a profound cultural foundation for using ambidextrous leadership (Luo, Zhao, Han, et al., 2016). From the unique cultural and practical background of China, the universal practicality and maturity of this measurement method remain to be discussed, so future researchers could examine the measurement of ambidextrous leadership and develop a scale to measure it directly.

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Gui-Liang Peng, School of Education Science, Zhoukou Normal University, Wenchang Road, Zhoukou, Henan 466001, People’s Republic of China. Email: [email protected]