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Can career calling reduce employee silence? The mediating role of thriving and the moderating role of inclusive leadership

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Abstract

Employees with a career calling are more likely to follow their hearts and behave in an authentic manner resulting from genuine love and passion; they are therefore unlikely to remain silent. However, little research has been conducted to investigate the interesting question of whether career calling can reduce silent behavior. Based on self-determination theory, we propose that career calling reduces employee silence by increasing employee thriving at work. We also propose that inclusive leadership moderates the positive effects of career calling on thriving. Multilevel data concerning 367 employees indicate that career calling negatively influences employees’ silent behavior via the mediating effect of thriving and that inclusive leadership positively moderates this indirect relationship. By taking individual psychological and organizational contextual factors into account, our research expands our understanding of the potential impact of career calling in organizations, thereby contributing to the task of explaining the psychological mechanisms by which career calling reduces silent behavior and the boundary conditions under which such mechanisms operate. This research thus provides insight into ways of reducing negative organizational behaviors at a deeper level.

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Data availability

The datasets generated during and analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Funding

This research was supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Project No.2018 CDJSK 02 PT 11).

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Contributions

M.F. contributed in resources, data curation, and supervision of the paper. Y.X. contributed in writing original draft, conceptualization, formal analysis, editing and methodology; K.C. contributed in resources and data collection of the paper.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ming Feng.

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Ethics approval

This study was approved from the ethics Committee of Chongqing University. The procedures used in this study adhere to the tenets of the Declaration of Helsinki. 

Informed consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study. At the beginning of the questionnaire survey, we informed the participants of the purpose of this study. Only those who are willing to participate are recruited. We guarantee their confidentiality and anonymity, and they can join or drop from the survey completely freely.

Competing interest

The authors have no competing interests to declare that are relevant to the content of this article. 

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Keying Chen is an equal contributor.

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Xu, Y., Chen, K. & Feng, M. Can career calling reduce employee silence? The mediating role of thriving and the moderating role of inclusive leadership. Curr Psychol 42, 29928–29942 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-022-04002-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-022-04002-0

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