Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, China
Despite the significance of employees’ viewing work as a calling, few studies have explored the potential impact of this calling on employees’ thriving at work. By integrating social embeddedness model of thriving at work with behavioral confirmation of stereotypes theory, this research examines the positive and negative effects of calling on employees' thriving. We posit that employees’ calling prompts their direct leaders to exhibit transformational leadership behavior, thereby enhancing employees’ experience of thriving. We also posit, however, that leaders engage in exploitative behavior toward employees with a calling, impeding their thriving. Two-wave data collected from 235 employees and 93 leaders in Zhejiang, China, support our hypotheses. We also find that leaders’ own calling level mitigates their exploitative behavior toward employees with a calling but does not affect their enactment of transformational leadership behavior toward these employees, which, in turn, influences employee thriving. We provide theoretical and practical implications.
