Managerial Coaching, Ambidextrous Learning, and Team Creativity: The Moderating Role of Team Learning Goal Orientation

Zhao Hongdan; Liu Weiwei

doi:doi:10.16538/j.cnki.fem.2018.10.006

Summary

Socio-economic transformation and fierce competition increasingly place greater demands on supervisors in the organization. Responding positively to these changes, one primary task for supervisors is to effectively cultivate subordinates and improve their abilities. Such leadership is called managerial coaching, which refers to a series of practical process which can enhance subordinates’ learning, work ability and performance. Different from " top-to-bottom” leadership, managerial coaching cares equal interactions and inspirations. Recent studies have also verified that managerial coaching is significantly positive to employees’ psychological and behavioral reactions. Despite of having attracted attention in academia, there are still many issues need to be addressed:（1）The research regarding managerial coaching mostly focus on the western culture. Due to great differences between the eastern and western cultures, these findings whether could be applied to Chinese organizations remain verifying.（2）Theoretical research in the managerial coaching area lags far behind the practical development. As such, only limited outcome variables are examined, such as job satisfaction, organizational commitment and job performance. More importantly, most studies focus on the individual level, rarely involving the team level. Furthermore, relative to the direct influence of managerial coaching, specific mediating mechanisms by which managerial coaching works are less examined.（3）In terms of the moderating mechanism, managerial coaching literature is even scare in the west. As pointed out by Kim（2014）, one of the promising directions in further research is to investigate the boundary conditions that link managerial coaching to its outcome variables. 　　To fill the above gaps, the purposes of our study are as follows: First, we explore the influence of managerial coaching on team effectiveness. Considering that team creativity is closely related to an organization’s survival and development, we focus on team creativity in the specific choice of team effectiveness outcomes. Second, based on the social learning theory, we predict that ambidextrous learning will play a mediating role in the relationship between managerial coaching and team creativity. Third, from the perspective of learning goal orientation, we identify team learning goal orientation as a potential contingency factor in the managerial coaching-team creativity relationship. By doing so, we accurately interpret the boundary conditions of managerial coaching in Chinese organizations.　　Based on the project team inside a state-owned construction company in Shanghai, we collect data by means of a questionnaire survey. Through 73 paired samples of the supervisors and their subordinates, the results indicate that managerial coaching plays a positive role in team creativity. However, managerial coaching makes its active effect on team creativity by means of ambidextrous learning. In addition, team learning goal orientation not only moderates the direct influence of managerial coaching on ambidextrous learning, but also strengthens the whole mediation effect.　　The above conclusions have some significance in both theory and practice. Specificly, in theory:（1）besides enriching theoretical research of managerial coaching in the cross-cultural context, we also expand its outcome variables;（2）from the social learning perspective, we examine the mediating role of ambidextrous learning in the relationship between managerial coaching and team creativity, further uncovering how managerial coaching black-box influences team creativity;（3）we add team learning goal orientation to the underlying mechanism of managerial coaching, resulting in more specific conclusions. In practice:（1）to motivate the maximum effectiveness of managerial coaching, organizations should develop managers’ coaching skills;（2）to enhance team creativity, organizations should not only cultivate managerial coaching, but also integrate exploratory learning and exploitative learning, stimulating the influence of ambidextrous learning;（3）managers need to set different management strategies for teams of different learning goal orientations.