Can manager's listening behavior benefit employees? Power distance may have the answer

The current research investigated employee’s perception of their manager’s listening behavior (MLB). Drawing on the group-value theory, we examined the role of MLB and analyzed its effect through employee’s power distance orientation. We distributed questionnaires to 219 employees and adopted two-wave data collection to ameliorate the bias of common method variance. Statistical analysis revealed that MLB was related to employees’ well-being and work engagement. For employees with lower power distance orientation, MLB led to more self-esteem. For employees with higher power distance orientation, MLB did not affect their self-esteem. MLB was not always beneficial to the employees, as individuals may interpret MLB positively or negatively. Research findings have brought new insights into the listening literature, particularly from the perspective of manager’s listening behavior. We encourage the organizations to incorporate listening skills into the education programs (for training incumbent managers) and recruitment criterions (for hiring new managers). Implications on the manager-employee relationship are also discussed.

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in The International Journal of Listening (IJL) on 18 Jan 2022, available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/10904018.2021.2004892