SummaryInnovative behavior is increasingly important for organizations' survival. Transformational leadership, in contrast to transactional leadership, has been argued to be particularly effective in engendering follower innovative behavior. However, empirical evidence for this relationship is scarce and inconsistent. Addressing this issue, we propose that follower psychological empowerment moderates the relationship of transformational and transactional leadership with follower innovative behavior. In a field study with 230 employees of a government agency in the Netherlands combining multisource ratings, we show that transformational leadership is positively related to innovative behavior only when psychological empowerment is high, whereas transactional leadership has a negative relationship with innovative behavior only under these conditions.

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Employee silence, the withholding of work-related ideas, questions, or concerns from someone who could effect change, has been proposed to hamper individual and collective learning as well as the detection of errors and unethical behaviors in many areas of the world. To facilitate cross-cultural research, we validated an instrument measuring four employee silence motives (i.e., silence based on fear, resignation, prosocial, and selfish motives) in 21 languages. Across 33 countries (N = 8,222) representing diverse cultural clusters, the instrument shows good psychometric properties (i.e., internal reliabilities, factor structure, and measurement invariance). Results further revealed similarities and differences in the prevalence of silence motives between countries, but did not necessarily support cultural stereotypes. To explore the role of culture for silence, we examined relationships of silence motives with the societal practices cultural dimensions from the GLOBE Program. We found relationships between silence motives and power distance, institutional collectivism, and KNOLL ET AL.

Use policyThe full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. MOTIVATION IN WORDS: PROMOTION-AND PREVENTION-ORIENTED LEADER COMMUNICATION IN TIMES OF CRISISWhen during the 2008 US presidential elections a financial crisis erupted, the US people overwhelmingly voted for Barack Obama, the candidate who had adopted the slogan "change we can believe in" and who emphasized hope and optimism when he addressed the people. In line with this example, research demonstrates that situational uncertainty or crisis strongly influences the endorsement of the more charismatic or decisive leadership styles and that inspirational communication is at the heart of these styles (see Bligh clear what leaders should communicate in order to be endorsed in difficult times. We argue that regulatory focus (Higgins, 1987(Higgins, , 1997 of leader communication, which we refer to as regulatory orientation, is an important determinant of leadership endorsement during crisis.,Studies on the role of regulatory focus in leadership mostly seem to focus on regulatory fit effects (Avnet & Higgins, 2006;Cesario, Grant, & Higgins, 2004). Regulatory fit theory posits that persons who's regulatory focus is sustained by the environment, will be experiencing a situation of "feeling right". If individuals feel right they become more persuaded, more motivated, more engaged and their evaluations of the elements that sustain their regulatory focus intensify. Hence, followers may perceive a leader as effective and motivating when the regulatory orientation of the leader's communication fits followers' regulatory focus (cf. Stam, van Knippenberg & Wisse, 2010a). Based on this argument, some researchers have speculated that leaders who use prevention-oriented communication may be especially endorsed in times of crisis because the negative affect and uncertainty associated with crisis induce a prevention focus in MOTIVATION IN WORDS 3 followers and prevention-oriented leader communication sustains a prevention focus (cf. Bruch, Shamir, & Eilam-Shamir, 2007;Stam et al., 2010a).In the current research we challenge this idea. We acknowledge that the uncertainty and negative feelings engendered by crises may induce a prevention focus in individuals, but based he regulatory focus literature (e.g., Hamstra, Sassenberg, van Yperen, & Wisse, 2013;Johnson, Smith, Wallace, Hill, & Baron, 2015) we argue that fit caused by prevention-oriented communication during crisis serves to intensify the uncertainty and negative feelings related to the crisis. This will lead to less motivation to realize the...