The effect of leader-team (in-)congruence in future orientation on leader's participative leadership: the moderating role of leader workload

PurposePrior studies have consistently treated participative leadership as a given leadership style. Conversely, this study aims to prove that participative leadership can be predicted by leaders and teams collectively, depending on leaders' work characteristics (i.e. workload).Design/methodology/approachA two-source survey was designed to collect data from a sample of 89 leader-team dyads in a trading company in a southeastern Chinese city. Polynomial regression and response surface analysis were used to test the hypotheses.FindingsThe leader showed more participative leadership when leader-team future orientation was congruent rather than incongruent; in the congruent situation, there was an inverted U-shaped relationship between leader-team future orientation congruence and participative leadership; in the incongruent situation, when the team's future orientation gradually exceeded the leader's, participative leadership first increased and then decreased; and leader workload positively moderated the relationship between leader-team future orientation congruence and participative leadership.Originality/valueThese findings theoretically respond to the call for investigating the influence of leader-team future orientation congruence on leaders' behaviors, and in practice enlighten managers on how to encourage supervisors to involve employees in decision-making processes.