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How do leaders’ positive emotions Person–job fit

improve followers’ person–job fit in

China? The effects of
organizational identification and
psychological safety Received 8 September 2019
Revised 2 February 2020
30 October 2020
Chongrui Liu Accepted 1 November 2020
Beijing Electronic Science and Technology Institute, Beijing, China
Cong Wang
Institute of Disaster Prevention, Sanhe, China, and
Hongjie Wang
Beijing Electronic Science and Technology Institute, Beijing, China

Abstract
Purpose – Although a plethora of literature has developed person–job fit theory, how leaders’ emotions affect
followers’ person–job fit has received insufficient attention. Drawing on emotions as social information (EASI)
theory, the present research study investigated the impact of leaders’ positive emotions on person–job fit and
further explained the mediating role of psychological safety and the moderating effect of organizational
identification.
Design/methodology/approach – Data were collected from 319 Chinese employees nested in 67 teams, and
a cross-level design was adopted to examine the research hypotheses.
Findings – The results indicated that individual-level psychological safety played a mediating role in the
cross-level relationship between team-directed leaders’ positive emotions and individual-level person–job fit.
Moreover, the authors found a cross-level moderating effect of team-level organizational identification.
Practical implications – This present research empirically showed that leaders displaying positive
emotions in the workplace benefited followers’ perceptions of psychological safety, which in turn improved
followers’ attitudes towards their job in management practice. In addition, organizational identification could
positively advance this process.
Originality/value – This study is the first to evaluate the operational mechanism of leaders’ emotion on
followers’ perceived person–job fit in the Chinese context. Person–job fit has primarily been investigated as a
driver of employee outcomes in the previous research studies. These studies focussed on whether and how
leaders’ emotions improve followers’ person–job fit.
Keywords Positive emotion, Psychological safety, Organizational identification, Person–job fit
Paper type Research paper

Introduction
As a complementary fit of person–environment fit (Kristof-Brown et al., 2005), person–job fit
has attracted burgeoning attention in recent decades and has been empirically confirmed by
an extensive body of research to be related to positive organizational outcome, such as job
satisfaction (Kim et al., 2018), affective commitment (Kim et al., 2018) and innovative
behaviour (Choi et al., 2017). However, the majority of previous research studies have
excessively centred on the outcomes of person–environment fit (including person–job fit)
Leadership & Organization
This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under grant number Development Journal
71802025, and by the Ministry of Education’s Humanities and Social Sciences project under grant © Emerald Publishing Limited
0143-7739
number 17YJC630107. DOI 10.1108/LODJ-09-2019-0388
LODJ rather than its causes (Seong and Choi, 2014). Previous studies suggest that workplace
emotions are the most common daily cause of person–environment fit (Yu, 2009).
In particular, given the powerful position, leaders’ emotions play a critical role in
conducting the organizational emotional tone and shaping followers’ emotions, attitudes
and behaviours (e.g. Dasborough et al., 2009; Joseph et al., 2015; Braun et al., 2018). However,
much less is known about whether and how leaders’ positive emotions stimulate followers’
person–job fit.
In addition to neglecting the relationship between leaders’ positive emotions and
followers’ person–job fit, few studies have investigated “the mechanism that stimulates fit”
(Kristof-Brown et al., 2005, p. 321). Being uniquely focussed on the consequences of emotional
expressions (Van Kleef, 2009), emotions as social information (EASI) theory proposes that
expressers’ emotions influence perceivers through affective reactions and inferential
processes. In affective reactions, expresser’ positive emotions elicit various types of “affect
infusion”, while in the inferential process, expressers’ positive emotions serve as information
from which perceivers infer expressers’ feelings, attitudes, social intentions and appraisal of
the situation (Van Kleef, 2014). However, to the best of our knowledge, few previous studies
have examined EASI theory in the leadership context (Van Kleef et al., 2009; Wang and Seibet,
2015). Thus, there is now a need to more fully integrate EASI theory to uncover the
mechanisms of how leaders’ emotions affect followers’ outcomes in workplace.
Finally, despite the general findings that leaders’ positive emotions lead to positive
outcomes, whether this positive relationship depends on certain potential boundary conditions,
to date, has received insufficient attention. EASI theory suggests that the process of expressers’
emotions influencing perceivers largely depends on perceivers’ individual differences and
contextual factors (Van Kleef, 2009). We rely on EASI theory as an explanatory mechanism and
argue that work unit organization identification is a contextual factor which may shape the
relationship between leaders’ positive emotions and followers’ person–job fit. Organizational
identification refers to the self-definition in which employees consider themselves and the
organization as a whole (Tajfel, 1978) and a critical driver in “improving employee adaptation to
organizational change developments” (Roussin and Webber, 2012, p. 318). Emerging empirical
evidence supports the moderating role of organizational identification in the effect of leaders on
follower-related outcomes (e.g. Wang et al., 2017; Roussin and Webber, 2012). However, there is
an important gap in the literature on how organizational identification affects the relationship
between leaders’ emotions and followers’ outcomes.
In view of the discussion above, drawing on EASI theory, we present a study that
examines how leaders’ emotions affect followers’ person–job fit by exploring the roles of
psychological safety as a mediator and organizational identification as a moderator. This
study makes contributions to the current literature reviews in following ways. First, we
extend the existing person–job fit literature reviews by theorizing leaders’ emotions as its
antecedent, which also empirically testify Gabriel et al.’s (2014) proposition that work-based
emotion may lead to fit and respond to Yu’s (2009) lament that person–environment fit has
been solely considered a cause of attitudes and behaviour. Second, this study fills a gap in the
literature by investigating the role of psychological safety and organizational identification in
the process of leaders’ positive emotion stimulating followers’ person–job fit, which adds to
our knowledge of the mechanism by which employees develop a perceived person–job fit (e.g.
Han et al., 2015). Additionally, this study extends EASI theory, which centres on the effects of
emotions on behaviour, by showing that this theory may also benefit us in better
understanding how and under which conditions leaders’ emotions affect followers’ perceived
person–job fit. Third, we conduct a cross-level design in which we identify the average
frequency of positive emotions displayed by leaders to all followers as an antecedent and the
work unit average level of all followers’ organizational identification as a contextual factor.
More practically, our study highlights the importance of leaders making sense of displaying
positive emotions towards followers and for organizations in creating an environment where Person–job fit
employees highly identify with the organization. Finally, this study performs a survey in the
Chinese context. Most current research studies have been conducted in the Western cultural
context (e.g. Frazier et al., 2017), while the cultural difference (e.g. traditional values; power
distance) between Western and Eastern countries is vast (Au and Kwan, 2009). For instance,
given the cultural sensitivity to hierarchy, Chinese employees sometimes are discouraged to
speak up and perform the job in their own way (e.g. Huang et al., 2005; Bui et al., 2017).
Therefore, by testing our hypotheses amongst the Chinese sample, we provide an empirical
test of whether EASI theory previously supported in Western contexts might be
generalizable to an Eastern context.
The conceptual model of this study is depicted in Figure 1.

The literature and hypotheses development

Leaders’ positive emotions and person–job fit
Emotions reflect individuals’ response tendencies within a short time, such as fear, anger, joy
and interest (Fredrickson, 2001). In general, given leaders’ positions in organizations, their
emotion is often deemed a pivotal factor in shaping the work unit emotion tone (Ashkanasy and
Humphrey, 2011; Little et al., 2016). Compared to displaying negative emotions, displaying
positive emotions is more motivating (Van Knippenberg, 2016) and favoured by a general
societal display rule. Therefore, this study focusses on leaders’ positive emotions. EASI theory
suggests that leaders’ positive emotions may arouse followers’ positive emotions through
affective reactions and signal positive feedback to the current situation through inferential
processes. For example, a happy leader may extend their happiness to followers through the
mood contagion process (Bono and Ilies, 2006; Chi et al., 2011; Erez et al., 2008). Additionally,
followers infer that they perform well in the presence of a happy leader (Van Kleef, 2009; Sy
et al., 2005). A number of empirical studies have provided robust evidence consistent with EASI
theory (Wang and Seibet, 2015; Liu et al., 2017; Methot et al., 2017); for example, Wang and
Seibert show that leader emotional display is associated with followers’ performance.
Drawing on EASI theory (Van Kleef, 2008), we predict a positive relationship between
leaders’ positive emotions and followers’ person–job fit. Amongst various types of person–
environment fit, person–job fit is deemed to be a task-related fit, which describes the
congruence between employees and job characteristics. Person–job fit determines to a large
extent whether people find the job significant and satisfying or stressful and unpleasant to
their well-being. The expanded model of person–environment fit suggests that individuals
experiencing positive work-based emotion tend to generate the perception of person–
environment fit, including person–job fit (Yu, 2009), this is because that individuals are
more likely to make evaluative judgements based on their feelings (Schwarz and Clore, 1983).
In the same vein, employees judge their person–job fit status on the basis of how they feel
about their current job (i.e. experience work-based emotion) (Yu, 2009). Specially, relative to
negative emotion, positive emotion is more likely to produce favourable fit perceptions
(Kristof-Brown and Guay, 2010; Gabriel et al., 2014).
According to EASI theory, on the one hand, leaders’ positive emotions lead to followers’
positive emotions in affective reactions, which tend to generate perceived person–job fit
(Yu, 2009). On the other hand, in inferential processes, leaders displaying positive emotions
serve as information from which followers infer that leaders are satisfied with their current
performance, which will generate more positive attitudes and judgements towards their jobs.

Leaders’ positive emotions Organizational identification

Team level Figure 1.
Individual level
The theoretical model
Psychological safety Person-job fit
LODJ Therefore, it may be inferred that leaders’ positive emotion increases followers’ perceived
person–job fit. We hypothesize that
H1. Leaders’ positive emotion is positively related to followers’ perceived person–job fit.

The mediating role of psychological safety

Psychological safety refers to a cognitive state in which employees assess that they can freely
show themselves and express their views in the workplace without worrying about any
negative consequences for themselves and their careers (Kahn, 1990). Psychological safety
implies that employees consider they will not be refused or punished for expressing divergent
viewpoints (O’Neill, 2009). There is growing evidence that psychological safety has a
considerable influence on sharing information behaviour (Frazier et al., 2017), task
performance (Nembhard and Edmondson, 2011), work engagement (Frazier et al., 2017)
and so on.
As powerful agents in the workplace, leaders play an important role in arousing followers’
psychological safety. Indeed, a growing body of research has provided empirical evidence for
this proposition (e.g. Schaubroeck et al., 2011; Duan et al., 2018; Walumbwa and Schaubroeck,
2009; or see an overview, Frazier et al., 2017). In addition to the direct impact of leaders on
followers’ psychological safety, some scholars have also shown that employees’
psychological safety plays a mediating role in the impact of leaders on followers’ outcomes
such as reflexivity (Carmeli et al., 2014), organizational identification (Liu et al., 2016), voice
behaviour (Walumbwa and Schaubroeck, 2009), employee involvement (Carmeli et al., 2010)
and job engagement (Frazier et al., 2017). However, whether psychological safety plays a
mediating role in the effect of leaders’ emotion on followers’ outcomes is underresearched.
Drawing on EASI theory, this study integrates the inferential process and expects that
leaders’ positive emotions affect followers’ person–job fit by improving followers’
psychological safety. In the inferential process of EASI theory, followers infer from
leaders’ positive emotions that the environment is encouraging and safe (Rajah et al., 2011).
Such circumstances are beneficial for followers feeling psychologically safe (Douglas et al.,
2004), which acts as a necessary factor in making people feel attachment to their work roles
and continue their current job (Kahn, 1990; Edmondson, 1999).
Moreover, leaders displaying positive emotions will be considered to be characterized by
available, accessible and reliable (Carmeli et al., 2010), which contributes to arousing
followers’ psychological safety (Nembhard and Edmondson, 2006). On the one hand,
psychological safety implies individuals’ positive motivational states towards their job
(Frazier et al., 2017), which enable them to feel secure and actively adjust themselves to fit the
job (Schein and Bennis, 1965). On the other hand, psychological safety is naturally an
interpersonal relationship built on workplace interaction (Edmondson, 2002). When followers
psychologically consider themselves members of an organization, which implies that it is safe
to be themselves, they are likely to adjust themselves to fit the organizational system (Carmeli
et al., 2007). Taken together, we postulate that
H2. Psychological safety mediates the relationship between leaders’ positive emotion
and followers’ person–job fit.

The moderating role of organizational identification on the relationship between leaders’

positive emotion and followers’ psychological safety
Organizational identification describes the extent to which an employee perceives his or her
identity and that of an organization (Ashforth and Mael, 1989). As a key component of
individuals’ self-concept (Roussin and Webber, 2012), organizational identification refers to a
psychological attachment in which employees define themselves in the same manner in
which they define organizations (Dutton et al., 1994). Organizational identification contains Person–job fit
not only a self-concept of organizational membership, which is characterized by “belonging”
to the organization (Riantoputra, 2010), but also a close tie between the self and the
organization, which is characterized by an emotional attachment to the organization
(Ashforth et al., 2008). Following this position, an extensive body of research has shown that
organizational identification is a key driver of positive job outcomes such as job involvement
(Riketta, 2005) and extra-role performance (Liu et al., 2011).
In addition to the proximal cause of job outcomes, the literature cites organizational
identification as an important moderator determining the relationships amongst several
antecedents and job-related outcomes. In particular, a mass of research studies have verified that
organizational identification has a moderating effect on the relationship between leadership and
followers’ outcomes. For instance, Wang et al. (2017) found that organizational identification
moderated the relationship between transformational leadership and subordinates’ adaptability.
Drawing on EASI theory, this study proposes that leaders’ positive emotions and followers’
psychological safety are largely dependent on organizational identification.
EASI theory suggests that perceivers’ individual differences and contextual factors
determine the process of expressers’ emotions influencing perceivers (Van Kleef, 2009). Work-
related identification provides the psychological context within which people give meaning to
what they do and experience at work (Conroy et al., 2017). Organizational identification refers to
the psychological process in which individuals consider themselves a part of an organization
(Mandalaki et al., 2019), which serves as a powerful factor in how people make sense of their
emotions (Conroy et al., 2017). The more employees identify with the organization, the more
likely they will be to develop the general conception that they are “in-group” (Eisenberger et al.,
1986) and emotional attachment to the organization (Ashforth et al., 2008). This high self-
consistency motive ensures that employees show themselves and express their viewpoints
freely without worrying about any negative outcomes. In this situation, leaders’ positive
emotions have a stronger effect on followers’ psychological safety. Conversely, for employees
with low or no organizational identification, they will not view themselves as part of the
organization in self-definition. In this situation, leaders’ positive emotions have limited effects
on followers’ psychological safety. Therefore, we postulated that
H3. Followers’ organizational identification moderates the relationship between leaders’
positive emotion and followers’ psychological safety.

The moderated mediating model

Based on the above discussion, it can be concluded from Hypothesis 1, Hypothesis 2 and
Hypothesis 3 that leaders’ positive emotion can not only be a proximal cause of followers’
perceived person–job fit but also indirectly influence followers’ person–job fit through
followers’ psychological safety. Furthermore, the influencing mechanism largely depends on
followers’ organizational identification. For followers high in organizational identification,
leaders’ positive emotions promote person–job fit via psychological safety more significantly
than for followers low in organizational identification. Under such circumstances, followers’
motivation to adjust themselves to fit their jobs tends to be more likely influenced by their
leaders’ positive emotions. In contrast, for followers low in organizational identification,
leaders’ positive emotion less significantly facilitates their person–job fit via psychological
safety. Based on this inference, organizational identification may be considered a key
boundary condition in the mediating mechanism of leaders’ positive emotion facilitating
followers’ person–job fit via psychological safety.
H4. Followers’ organizational identification moderates the mediated relationship
between leaders’ positive emotion and followers’ person–job fit via psychological
LODJ safety. Specifically, compared with followers low in organizational identification, the
mediated relationship is stronger for followers high in organizational identification.

The research method

Participants and procedure
Data were collected from 74 teams nested in 14 state-owned enterprises, which ensures
various organizations to participate in this survey. The reasons we choose state-owned
enterprises is that state-owned enterprises in China are characterized by supervisor-oriented
systems and more traditional management styles (Duan et al., 2018). These state-owned
enterprises were located in Beijing, Anhui and Hainan provinces. One of the reasons for this is
that we use personal contacts for convenience. Moreover, the three regions are located in
middle, east and south of China, which to some extent ensures the representativeness.
Permitted by the personnel managers, we selected the teams distributed in different divisions.
To ensure the representativeness of the selected teams, we ensure that team number is
proportional to the size of the divisions. For larger teams, we were unable to survey every
team member, particularly for very large teams. For teams that had less than four members,
we surveyed all members in the team. After assuring the participants that this survey would
be used only for the purposes of academic research, we distributed 500 questionnaires, of
which 427 (85.40%) were completed and returned. Amongst all the questionnaires, some
samples were excluded because of missing or undesirable answers, such as reporting the
same score for every item. In addition, following researchers’ suggestion that the criteria for
aggregation in team research be no less than three responses (Kostopoulos et al., 2013; Li et al.,
2017), we deleted the teams that contained less than three members. In total, 67 teams
consisting of 319 responses remained. The average number of respondents per team was 4.76,
and the median was 5.00. The majority were three responses from 26 teams (38.81%), four
responses from 15 teams (22.39%) and five responses from seven teams (10.45%).
There was sufficient variation in terms of gender (57% female). The age range was as
follows: below 25 years (15%), between 26 and 35 years (35%), between 36 and 45 years (28%)
and above 46 years (22%). Followers’ education ranged from high school education or less
(24%), associate degree (24%) to university degree (52%). Most followers worked with the
same leader for more than four years (69%).
Measures
Team level of leaders’ positive emotions. We used Watson et al.’s (1988) positive and negative
affect schedule (PANAS) scale to measure the frequencies of leaders’ positive emotions.
Consistent with prior research examining leaders’ emotional display (e.g. Wang and Seibert,
2015), participants reported the frequency with which their direct supervisor displayed five
discrete positive emotions (i.e. happiness, enthusiasm, optimism, excitement and interest)
using a five-point response scale (1 5 “rarely” to 5 5 “very often”). Cronbach’s α was 0.93. We
performed a test of aggregation, and the results supported the aggregation: the mean rwg and
median rwg were 0.91 and 0.94, respectively, indicating that team members have strong
agreement (LeBreton and Senter, 2008). In addition, the estimated intraclass correlation (ICC)
(1) was 0.34 and (2) was 0.71 and the F-value F (66, 252) 5 4.41, p < 0.01, which further
supported the aggregation.
Person–job fit. We measured individual person–job fit with Cable and DeRue’s (2002)
scale, which has been previously validated in China (Lu et al., 2014). Participants adapted a
five-point response scale (1 5 “very strongly disagree” to 5 5 “very strongly agree”) to report
their perceptions of person–job fit, such as “There is a good fit between what my job offers me
and what I am looking for in a job”. Cronbach’s α was 0.86.
 Psychological safety. We measured individual psychological safety with Liang et al.’s Person–job fit
(2012) scale, which was previously validated in the Chinese context (e.g. Duan et al., 2018).
Participants adapted a five-point response scale (1 5 “very strongly disagree” to 5 5 “very
strongly agree”) to report their identification with the organization as follows: “I can express
my real feelings about work”. Cronbach’s α was 0.86.
Organizational identification. We assessed organizational identification as team members’
identification with the organization (i.e. six items; Mael and Ashforth, 1992). Participants
adapted a five-point response scale (1 5 “very strongly disagree” to 5 5 “very strongly
agree”) to report their identification with the organization as follows: “When someone
criticizes my organization, it feels like a personal insult”. Cronbach’s α was 0.86. The
aggregation was supported, and the mean (0.95) and median (0.97) rwg indicated strong
consensus amongst members within a team (LeBreton and Senter, 2008). In addition, the
estimated intraclass correlation (ICC) (1) was (0.15) and (2) was (0.47) and the F-value F (66,
252) 5 2.43, p < 0.01, which further supported the aggregation.
Control variables. The responses’ demographic variables such as gender, age, education
and dyadic tenure were used as control variables.
The analytic strategy. As the variables contained in this study were collected from a single
respondent and through the same method, it was difficult to avoid common method variance
(Podsakoff and Organ, 1986). Hence, following the proposal of Podsakoff et al. (2012), we took
procedural and statistical remedies. For the procedural remedies, we put the dependent
variables in front of the independent variables in the survey. For the statistical remedies, we
adopted Harman’s one-factor test to investigate potential bias, and the results indicated that
no single factor explained most of the variance in our sample.
Furthermore, following Simmering et al.’s (2016) suggestion, Mplus 7.3 was used to
conduct confirmatory factor analyses (CFAs) to eliminate the problem of common method
variance. Through the CFA, we compared the fit indices of the proposed four-factor model
and several alternative models. As shown in Table 1, the fit indices in the four-factor model
are better than those in the other models, which indicate that the four variables are
empirically distinct from each other.
Finally, due to the aims that we examined group-level construct influences on individual
outcomes, consistent with previous studies (e.g. Liang and Chi, 2013; Walumbwa et al., 2010),
we adopted hierarchical linear modelling (HLM; Raudenbush and Bryk, 2002) as our analytic
tool. Because HLM explicitly accounts for the nesting of the data by simultaneously
estimating the effect of multilevel factors on individual-level outcomes, which proved to be
reliable approaches for explicitly accounting for the nesting of the data when an analysis
mixes levels.

Results
The means, standard deviations and intercorrelations amongst our variables are presented in
Table 2, which provide preliminary support for our hypotheses. Leaders’ positive emotion is

Model χ2 df △χ 2(△df) RMSEA SRMR CFI TLI

M1: LP, OI, PS, PF 422.27 146 – 0.08 0.05 0.93 0.92
M2: LP þ OI, PS, PF 1076.43 149 654.16 (3) 0.14 0.13 0.76 0.73
M3: LP þ OI, PS þ PF 1183.16 151 760.90 (5) 0.15 0.13 0.74 0.70 Table 1.
M4: LP þ OIP þ S þ PF 1616.89 152 1194.62 (6) 0.17 0.11 0.63 0.58 Model fit results for
Note(s): all △χ2 are significant at p < 0.01. LP refers to leaders’ positive emotion; OI refers to organizational confirmatory factor
identification; PS refers to psychological safety; PF refers to person–job fit analyses
 LODJ

Table 2.
Means, standard

order correlations
deviations and zero-

among study variables

M SD 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

1. Gender 1.57 0.50 1

2. Age 2.56 1.00 0.07 1
3. Education 2.37 0.94 0.00 0.04 1
4. Dyadic tenure 2.22 1.03 0.00 0.73** 0.13* 1
5. Leaders’ positive emotion 3.86 0.79 0.09 0.04 0.13* 0.14* (0.93)
6. Psychological safety 3.97 0.66 0.11 0.00 0.27** 0.03 0.52** (0.86)
7. Person–job fit 4.11 0.64 0.12* 0.07 0.20** 0.04 0.47** 0.70** (0.86)
8. Organizational identification 4.24 0.55 0.09 0.08 0.07 0.05 0.40** 0.54** 0.51** (0.86)
9. Leaders’ positive emotion (team level) 3.86 0.58 0.10 0.14* 0.19** 0.16** 0.73** 0.45** 0.41** 0.34** 1
10. Organizational identification (team level) 4.24 0.34 0.11 0.03 0.05 0.04 0.40** 0.40** 0.38** 0.62** 0.54** 1
Note(s): n 5 319; *p < 0.05; **p < 0.01
positively related to person–job fit (β 5 0.47, p < 0.01) and psychological safety (β 5 0.52, Person–job fit
p < 0.01), and psychological safety positively predicts person–job fit (β 5 0.70, p < 0.01).

Tests of hypotheses
We tested all the hypotheses in a path-analysis framework using Mplus 7.3 and present the
results in Table 3. In all analyses, we controlled for followers’ gender, age, education and
dyadic tenure. Hypothesis 1 stated that leaders’ positive emotion was positively related to
followers’ perceived person–job fit. The results from model 1 indicated that leaders’ positive
emotion significantly predicted followers’ person–job fit (β 5 0.44, p < 0.001), and thus,
Hypothesis 1 was supported.
Next, we examined whether followers’ psychological safety mediated the relationship
between leaders’ positive emotion and followers’ perceived person–job fit. The results of
model 4 indicated that leaders’ positive emotion was positively related to followers’
psychological safety (β 5 0.35, p < 0.001), and the results of model 2 indicated that followers’
psychological safety was positively related to followers’ perceived person–job fit (β 5 0.59,
p < 0.001). Additionally, bias-corrected bootstrapping techniques (1,000 replications) were
adopted to test for the indirect effect. In accord with our own expectations, the results
indicated that leaders’ positive emotion had an indirect effect on person–job fit via followers’
psychological safety (indirect effect 5 0.31, 95% confidence interval excludes 0). Considering
that the significance of leaders’ positive emotion-related person–job fit decreased greatly
(p < 0.001 vs p < 0.01), we concluded that followers’ psychological safety partly mediated the
relationship between leaders’ positive emotion and person–job fit. Hence, Hypothesis 2 was
supported.
The results of model 5 indicated that the interaction between leaders’ positive emotion and
organizational identification was significant (β 5 0.29, p < 0.05) (psychological safety as the
dependent variable). Following Preacher et al.’s (2006) suggestion, we conducted simple slope
analyses. As presented in Figure 2, for followers high in organizational identification, the
relationship of leaders’ positive emotion and psychological safety was significant (β 5 0.34,
p < 0.01), and for followers low in organizational identification, the relationship of leaders’
positive emotion and psychological safety was not significant (β 5 0.07, ns). This result was
consistent with Hypothesis 3, which hypothesized that organizational identification
moderated the relationship between leaders’ positive emotion and psychological safety,
with the relationship being more strongly positive when organizational identification was
higher. Hence, Hypothesis 3 was supported.

Variable Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Model 5

Intercept 2.71*** 2.18*** 3.43*** 2.36*** 5.70**

Individual level
Gender 0.13* 0.04 0.06 0.07 0.08
Age 0.04 0.06 0.04 0.01 0.00
Education 0.10 0.00 0.02 0.14** 0.14***
Dyadic tenure 0.02 0.01 0.01 0.02 0.02
Psychological safety 0.59*** 0.59***
Team level
Leaders’ positive emotion 0.44*** 0.14** 0.54*** 0.35*** 0.07
Table 3.
Organizational identification 0.47 0.44*** 0.63 Summary of regression
Cross-level interaction analysis for leaders’
Leader positive emotion 3 Organizational 0.18þ 0.29* positive emotion
identification predicting person–
Note(s): n 5 319; *p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001 job fit
LODJ To test the moderated mediation relationships postulated in Hypothesis 4, we adopted
bootstrap estimates and constructed a bias-corrected confidence interval (95%) to estimate
two sets of effects at the high and low levels of the moderator (Edwards and Lambert, 2007).
The results of the conditional indirect effect indicated that at high levels of organizational
identification, leaders’ positive emotion had a significant indirect effect on person–job fit
(estimate 5 0.16; standard error 5 0.07; bias-corrected CI [0.02, 0.29]), while at low levels of
organizational identification, the indirect effect of leaders’ positive emotion on person–job fit
was not significant (estimate 5 0.14; standard error 5 0.07; bias-corrected CI [0.02, 0.28]).
The difference between high and low levels of organizational identification was significant
(estimate 5 0.03; standard error 5 0.00; bias-corrected CI [0.01, 0.05]). Therefore, H4 was
supported.

Discussion
The intention of this study was to advance the understanding of how leaders’ positive
emotions stimulate followers’ person–job fit. The results indicated that leaders’ positive
emotions were positively related to person–job fit and psychological safety partly mediated
this relationship. Conditional indirect effects of leaders’ positive emotion on person–job fit
were also found. Specifically, organizational identification positively moderated the
relationship between leaders’ positive emotion and psychological safety and positively
moderated the indirect effect of leaders’ positive emotion on person–job fit via psychological
safety.

Theoretical implications
Person–job fit has been confirmed to be an important cause of facilitating employees’ job
satisfaction and job engagement by scholars and practitioners. This present study suggests
that leaders’ positive emotions positively affect followers’ psychological safety, which in turn
results in person–job fit. In addition, it is also found that compared to followers low in
organizational identification, the indirect effect of leaders’ positive emotions on person–job fit
is stronger for followers high in organizational identification. Thus, the present study has
several theoretical implications.
First, this study fills a gap in the literature by offering empirical support for leaders’
emotion as a critical driver of followers’ person–job fit. Previous research asserted that
person–job fit could lead to a series of positive outcomes such as job satisfaction and work
engagement. However, few studies have investigated how person–job fit is influenced,
especially from the perspective of leadership (exceptions may, for instance, be found in work
inspired by Bui et al., 2017). Thus, we contribute to the literature by exploring the impact of

Low organizational identification

High organizational identification

Psychological safety

Figure 2.
The moderation effect
of organizational
identification on the
relationship between
leaders’ positive
emotion and
psychological safety Low High
Leaders’ positive emotion
leaders’ positive emotions on person–job fit, responding to Yu’s (2009) call for studies on the Person–job fit
relationship of leaders’ emotion and person–environment fit (including person–job fit).
Second, this study contributes to the theory on leadership and person–environment fit by
introducing psychological safety, a previously unexplored mediator. The results indicate that
leaders’ positive emotion is an important factor as psychological safety plays a significant
role in employees’ person–job fit. This research further expands our understanding of
employees’ person–job fit, in which person–job fit not only is impacted by leader style, such
as transformational leadership (Bui et al., 2017), but also can be influenced by leaders’
emotions.
Our findings also extend EASI theory, which focusses on the influence of expressers’
emotions on perceivers. EASI theory offers a mechanism by explaining the way expressers’
display of emotion influences perceivers by introducing that display of emotion can serve as a
social-functional signal. The present study expands the generalizability of EASI theory to the
realm of the leader–follower relationship and illustrates that the theory is also applicable to
leaders’ display of emotion. To the best of our knowledge, only two previous studies have
examined EASI theory in the leadership context (Van Kleef et al., 2009; Wang and Seibet,
2015). However, these studies were conducted in the job performance context, and we extend
the context to person–job fit. We make an important contribution to explaining the operating
mechanism in the inferential process of EASI theory. Moreover, we contribute to EASI theory
by providing evidence that the emotional inferential process is not always working because
the social conditional factor plays a moderating role. Our study tested whether the likely
social conditional factor is work unit organizational identification.
Third, the last contribution of this current study is to further extend social identification
theory to the field of leaders’ emotion. Although previous research has confirmed that leaders’
positive emotion does not always lead to positive outcomes (e.g. Visser et al., 2013), the
proximal conditional factor is still underexplored. Our findings indicate that work unit
organizational identification may be a conditional factor impacting the influence of leaders’
positive emotion on followers’ perceived person–job fit. As a special type of social
identification, organizational identification refers to employees’ self-definition in an
organization, which plays an important role in shaping individual motives and sense-
making processes (Lazarus, 1991). However, to the best of our knowledge, no research
introduces social identification theory into the emotion field. An expectation is the work of
Conroy et al. (2017), who proposed that organizational identification largely determines the
impact of individual emotions on turnover intention, but they did not examine leaders’
emotion as we do here. In general, given the position of the leader in an organization, the
effects of leaders’ display of emotion are more likely to be subtle and influential in the context
of leader–follower relationships, particularly in Eastern countries.

Practical implications
This present study has several implications for organizational leaders and practitioners.
First, it is important for human resources (HR) managers and practitioners, especially those in
Eastern cultures characterized by high power distance, to recognize the significant
consequence of leaders’ positive display of emotion in the daily workplace. In addition to
benefiting followers’ job-related performance (Wang and Seibet, 2015), our results also
confirmed that leaders displaying positive emotions also improved followers’ fit perception.
Because person–job fit is a dynamic process (e.g. Jansen and Kristof-Brown, 2006),
organizational managers should especially be aware of stable leader traits, such as
transformational leadership (e.g. Bui et al., 2017; Chang et al., 2015), which can lead to a better
fit with their jobs. The discrete emotion displayed by leaders in the daily workplace can also
facilitate followers’ person–job fit.
LODJ Second, employees high in psychological safety are more likely to perceive a better fit with
their job. Research has found that psychological safety is positively related to sharing
information behaviour (Frazier et al., 2017) and work engagement (Basit, 2017), which
suggests that organizations may benefit from employees’ psychological safety. HR policies
and managers might create a safe and relaxing work environment to encourage employees to
show themselves and express their views freely. For example, given their powerful position,
leaders might model voice behaviour, particularly prohibitive voice behaviour.
Third, managers might employ practices that create an identification climate and improve
employees’ identification with the organization so that employees perceive more fit with their
job. Self-definitions of membership in an organization are a key driver in identification
processes (Tajfel, 1978). In particular, organizational identification has a more powerful
influence on employee outcomes than occupational identification (Conroy et al., 2017).
Therefore, managers should enhance internal communication to enhance employees’
perception that they are members of the in-group rather than the out-group. Moreover,
research has found that organizational identification positively influences employees’
sharing of organizational objectives and their attitudinal support for objectives. Hence,
managers should recognize the importance of articulating the central values of the
organization for optimizing employees’ knowledge and attitudes to match their job
requirements.

Limitations and further research

Limitations are difficult to avoid in this study. First, we obtained data from the same source.
The team-level data of leaders’ positive emotion and organizational identification were
collected from the aggregation of the ratings of employees. Although the high ICC (1) value
helped ensure the appropriateness of the aggregation, there was potential for common
method variance. Future research could adopt multiple approaches to measure leaders’
positive emotion and organizational identification.
Second, based on EASI theory (Van Kleef, 2009), this study examined the mediating
mechanism of the relationship between leaders’ positive emotion and person–job fit, which
responded to Wang and Seibert’ (2015) call for exploring the mediating mechanisms.
However, we only included leaders’ positive emotions, and future research could examine the
effect of leaders’ negative emotions.
Third, this study did not contain all positive emotions in general, such as gratitude and
pride. There was a limitation in the generalizability of our findings. Hence, future research
could adopt other positive emotions to expand our study.

Conclusions
According to EASI theory, this study investigated how leaders’ positive emotion facilitated
followers’ person–job fit. The results indicated that leaders’ positive emotion was indirectly
and positively related to person–job fit through a high level of psychological safety. In this
process, followers’ organizational identification played a moderating role such that followers’
organizational identification positively enhanced the indirect relationship between leaders’
positive emotion and person–job fit through psychological safety.

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Corresponding author
Cong Wang can be contacted at: wangerzong@163.com

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