XJTLU International Business School Suzhou (IBSS) Assistant Professor of Strategic Management and Organisations,?Dr Qianyao Huang, recently published a paper titled ‘Polishing followers' future work selves! The critical roles of leader future orientation and vision communication’ in?international top research publication?The?Journal of Vocational Behavior (ABS4).
Dr. Huang’s research?focuses on the antecedents of Future Work Self Salience (FWSS) and explores how and when leaders shape employee?FWSS.?FWSS?refers to a clear and accessible self-image in relation to future work, a concept that outlines one's expectations and aspirations for one's future work self. This has been shown to?be a positive guide for individual employment and career planning. Dr.?Huang and three scholars from the University of International Business and Economics,?Nottingham University?Ningbo?and?the?Wuhan University of Technology used Social cognitive career theory and Self-affirmation theory to propose the?future?orientation of leaders.?After?several?rounds of?multi-source questionnaires?at?a?company?in the service industry,?they found support for their?hypothesis?that?a?leader’s?future orientation has a positive effect?on their ability to communicate their vision,?which then goes on to?promote?followers' FWSS.?Dr. Huang?and his co-authors also found?that?the?higher?the?perceived self-integrity?of a leader?was,?the better that leader was able to communicate their?future orientation through their vision, resulting in a further positive impact on employee?FWSS.
The findings of the study offer?a number of?recommendations for practice.?From an?organisational?perspective,?organisations?can consider assessing?future orientation and self-integrity?as?a key criteria?in their selection?of?leaders.?From the employee's perspective, employees can seek advice from leaders who have similar expertise and career trajectories to their own, in order to develop?a strong?vision of their?own?future work.
The authors note that one limitation of the study was?that?the data?came?purely from Chinese companies.?While?Chinese employees have a strong commitment to their employers?and?the communication of the leader’s?vision?is able to?effectively translate into employee?direction and FWSS,?the same may not be true of other?cultures. The authors therefore look forward to future research to determine whether the findings of their study still hold true in other socio-cultural contexts.
Dr. Qianyao Huang?is?an Assistant Professor at International Business School Suzhou. Her main research interests are in leadership, business ethics and digital management. Dr. Huang graduated from the Guanghua School of Management at Peking University in 2022 and joined IBSS in the same year.
Journal of Vocational Behavior?is a top journal in the field of career choice, career development and counselling published by Elsevier. With a recent impact factor of 6.065, Journal of Vocational Behaviour is highly regarded nationally and internationally.
Over the past year, IBSS scholars have published a number of papers in leading international academic journals at the UTD-24, FT-50 and ABS 4/4* levels,?including Management Science, Journal of Finance, Journal of Operations Management, Information System Research, Production and Operations Management,? Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Research Policy, Journal of World Business, Journal of Travel Research, Journal of Retailing, Human Resource Management, etc.,?and have been awarded a number of important research projects by the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the Humanities and Social Science Foundation of the Ministry of Education. The business school is well on its way to becoming a top-quality research-oriented business school.
