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Impact of supervisor Psychological

safety and face
developmental feedback orientation

on employee innovative behavior:

roles of psychological safety and 73
face orientation Received 23 February 2022
Revised 17 June 2022
22 September 2022
Liling Cai and Zengrui Xiao 21 October 2022
Accepted 28 October 2022
School of International Education, Zhejiang Sci-Tech University,
Hangzhou, China, and
Xiaofen Ji
School of International Education, Zhejiang Sci-Tech University,
Hangzhou, China and
China Silk Museum, Hangzhou, China

Abstract
Purpose – Drawing on social cognitive theory, this study aims to examine the relationship between supervisor
developmental feedback and employee innovative behavior, incorporating with the mediating role of
psychological safety and the moderating role of face orientation.
Design/methodology/approach – A survey was conducted in 15 manufacturing companies in China. The
participants comprised 302 employees. Hierarchical regression analysis was used to test the hypotheses.
The mediating effects and the moderated mediating effects are further examined with bias-corrected
bootstrapping method.
Findings – Supervisor developmental feedback has a positive effect on employee innovative behavior through
psychological safety, and this mediating effect is weakened by protective face orientation (fear of losing face),
while the moderating effect of acquisitive face orientation (desire to gain face) is not significant.
Practical implications – Organizations should create a development-oriented and safe innovation
atmosphere for employees. In addition, leaders should adopt differentiated feedback and communication
methods according to subordinates’ face orientation.
Originality/value – The study has demonstrated the positive effect of supervisor developmental feedback on
employee innovative behavior, which is different from previous studies on performance feedback and
leadership types. Meanwhile, this study has also explored the mediating effect of psychological safety and the
moderating effect of face orientation, which provides more insights on the mechanism and boundary conditions
of the effect of supervisor developmental feedback.
Keywords Supervisor developmental feedback, Psychological safety, Face orientation, Acquisitive face
orientation, Protective face orientation, Employee innovative behavior
Paper type Research paper

Introduction
The innovative behavior of employees is an inexhaustible driving force for an organization to
maintain competitive advantages and plays an important role in the improvement of
organizational performance (Saether, 2019; Shanker et al., 2017). Employees effectively
contribute to organizational innovation by generating, implementing and realizing new ideas

This research was supported by Philosophy and Social Science Planning Projects of Zhejiang Province Journal of Managerial Psychology
Vol. 38 No. 1, 2023
(21NDJC062YB), National Natural Science Foundation of China (72101233), Zhejiang Provincial Natural pp. 73-87
Science Foundation of China (LQ22G020006) and Fundamental Research Funds of Zhejiang Sci-Tech © Emerald Publishing Limited
0268-3946
University (2021Q063). DOI 10.1108/JMP-12-2021-0670
JMP (Zhou and George, 2001). Employee innovative behavior is a multi-stage process (Scott and
38,1 Bruce, 1994), and failure at any stage will lead to the termination of the entire innovation
process (Michaelis et al., 2010). At this point, if individuals want to successfully complete
innovation activities, they need not only their own efforts, but also external support and
guidance to ensure the ultimate benefit of organizational performance (Yang et al., 2020).
Undoubtedly, leadership is one of the important sources of employees’ true perception that
the organization supports employee-level innovation (Gupta, 2020). Previous studies on the
74 impact of leadership behavior on employee innovation behavior have focused on leadership
characteristics and types, such as transformational leadership (Khan and Khan, 2019),
empowering leadership and sharing leadership (Hoch, 2013), while there are relatively few
studies on communication between supervisors and subordinates. Feedback is the most
common form of communication between supervisors and subordinates (Johnson et al., 2015).
Previous studies have demonstrated that feedback from supervisor has a significant impact
on employees’ psychology and behavior (Bak, 2020). However, traditional leadership
feedback pays more attention to employees’ previous performance, and thus may have
limited positive impact on subordinates’ future performance (Belschak and Den Hartog, 2009;
Joo et al., 2015). Especially when faced with complex innovation tasks, employees often feel
uncertain. Feedback that focuses on employee development seems to have a stronger positive
effect on employees’ innovative behavior.
Supervisor developmental feedback refers to the extent to which supervisors provide
subordinates with helpful or valuable information for their future work or development
(Zhou, 2003). Previous studies have confirmed that supervisor developmental feedback can
effectively improve employee creativity and performance (Zhou, 2003; Li et al., 2011). It seems
that supervisor developmental feedback may be an effective predictor of supervisor behavior
driving subordinate innovation. However, few studies provide evidence on how supervisor
developmental feedback affects employee innovative behavior, and research findings are
inconsistent. Some studies have found that supervisor developmental feedback can promote
employee innovative behavior (Li et al., 2011; Su et al., 2019), while some others found no
significant impact. This implies that there may be some other cognitive mechanisms and
boundary conditions to be explored for the effect of supervisor developmental feedback.
Under these conditions, employees may evaluate feedback differently, which in turn affects
the effectiveness of feedback (Gabriel et al., 2014; Ehrhart and Klein, 2001). In this study, we
explore relevant issues from the perspective of social cognition.
Social cognitive theory assumes that individuals learn in a certain social environment, and
that person, environment and behavior interact with each other (Bandura, 1986). In an
organization, supervisor behavior will affect employee behavior greatly (Carmeli et al., 2013),
and employees can develop their cognitive and behavioral competency by learning from their
supervisor. In daily work, leaders who do not advocate sticking to the beaten track will
actively advocate change and development (To et al., 2015). Based on the social cognitive
theory (Bandura, 1986), if employees take supervisor’s behavior of seeking change and
improvement as a good example, they develop a cognitive tolerance of failure which will
reduce their anxiety and worry, and they may be braver to express their ideas and try more
innovative activities, even if the probability of failure is high. Therefore, we deduce that
supervisors’ developmental feedback can affect employees’ innovative behavior through
perception of psychological safety.
Since the social cognitive theory emphasizes the interaction of environment, individual
and behavior, and they are always interactive to each other, we deduce that individual
differences can affect the relationships of the indirect paths (Baer and Frese, 2003). Face is one
of the key factors to explain the complexity of social interaction in Asian societies and
organizations (Kim and Nam, 1998), which is particularly typical in the cultural background
emphasizing collectivism and high-power distance. Audia and Locke (2003) found that the
difference in face need may be an important factor that triggers different feedback cognition Psychological
and psychological reactions. Face refers to the public image or social dignity obtained by safety and face
individuals through others (Ho, 1976). The concept of face includes social and moral aspects,
and this paper focuses on social face orientation from two dimensions. One is acquisitive face
orientation
orientation, which comes from employee’s consciousness of desire to gain face, refers to the
degree to get social respect. The other is protective face orientation, which focuses on
employee’s consciousness of fear of losing face, refers to the degree to avoid being negatively
evaluated (Ho, 1976; Zhang et al., 2011). 75
In organization, subordinates often “filter” the instructions or intentions of leaders
according to their own face orientation, resulting in obstacles to the effective dissemination of
feedback information. We deduce that employees with high acquisitive face orientation may
want to get more information from feedback (Chou, 1996), so as to help them successfully
complete innovation to gain face. Therefore, they benefit and learn more from supervisor
developmental feedback, and more dare to express their views. However, employees with
high protective face orientation will use defense mechanisms to protect their self-esteem and
avoid losing face (Blaine and Crocker, 1993; Spencer et al., 1993), which will lead to useful
information in feedback being filtered or blocked, hinder the communication between
employees and leaders and then reduce employees’ free expression of ideas and innovative
activities. Based on the above views, our research integrates the moderated role of acquisitive
face orientation and protective face orientation.
In summary, this study aimed to reveal the impact of supervisor developmental feedback
on employee innovative behavior, integrating the mediating effect of psychological safety
and the moderating effect of face orientation. Thus, this study makes mainly two
contributions to the literature, which are: (1) our research tests the role of a theoretical
framework constructed through the social cognitive theory in predicting employee
innovative behavior. Specifically, our study validates that supervisor developmental
feedback is an important predictor of leadership behavior in promoting innovative
behavior, and tests psychological safety as an important psychological mediator of
supervisor developmental feedback -induced contributions to innovation. (2) Our research
clearly distinguishes two different orientations of face needs in the context of Chinese culture,
and provides insights into the differential interference effects of the tendencies to gain or
protect face on supervisors’ delivery of feedback.
Overall, this study broadens people’s understanding of the theory of leadership behavior
effectiveness, and also increases our understanding of the impact of leadership behavior on
innovative behavior from the perspective of boundary conditions in the context of Chinese
culture.

Theory and hypotheses

Supervisor developmental feedback and employee innovative behavior
Supervisor developmental feedback refers to useful feedback provided by direct supervisors
to employees to help them develop and improve at work (Zhou, 2003). Li et al. (2011) found
that supervisor development feedback creates a positive atmosphere without pressure, which
promotes employees to express their new ideas bravely. Feedback in an encouraging way to
create a flexible working atmosphere and brings employees more freedom, which will
stimulate the intrinsic motivation of employees and participate in innovative activities
(Bandura, 2006; Ashford and Northcraft, 2003). According to the social cognitive theory,
employees get important information about work adjustment and development improvement
from supervisors’ feedback, and will more calmly cope with work challenges, which creates
excellent conditions for better practice of innovative behavior. Supervisor developmental
feedback focuses on the exploration of employees’ potential and encourages employees to
JMP take risks (Detert and Burris, 2007), which may turn employees to be more adventurous to
38,1 implement innovative behaviors.
Besides, Kluger and DeNisi (1996) found that when feedback provides detailed
information about which strategies needed to be changed, people are more likely to work
harder and smarter, and would try to develop different task strategies. Due to the great
uncertainty of employees’ innovation tasks, it is necessary to adjust the method according to
the innovation process in order to formulate more flexible task strategies to deal with
76 innovation challenges. Since supervisor developmental feedback not only points out past
problems for employees, but also provides relevant suggestions for future changes and work
adjustments, this detailed and comprehensive information will help employees develop more
flexible task strategies and promote employees’ innovation process. So, supervisor
developmental feedback may enhance employees’ innovative behavior. Therefore, we
propose the following hypothesis:
H1. Supervisor developmental feedback will be positively associated with employee
innovative behavior.

Mediating effect of psychological safety

Psychological safety refers to expressing and presenting one’s true self without fear of
negative consequences (Kahn, 1990). Psychological safety is one of the key psychological
states affecting employees’ intrinsic motivation (Hackman and Oldham, 1976). The social
cognitive theory assumes that people’s social cognition is affected by the external
environment (Bandura, 1986). Supervisor developmental feedback may be an important
external factor affecting employees’ psychological safety perception, which is mainly
reflected in the following aspects.
Firstly, supervisor developmental feedback provides high-value information resources
that contribute to employees’ learning, helps employees grasp future work tasks (Dahling
et al., 2017), which can alleviate employees’ anxiety when facing uncertainty and improve
their sense of psychological safety. Secondly, the developmental concept advocated by the
supervisor is conducive to building a set of behavior models that can tolerate mistakes or
failures, and provide subordinates with respect, tolerance and support necessary for
psychological security (Baer and Frese, 2003). Thirdly, supervisors provide employees with
useful information for development in a relatively free atmosphere, support employees to
take risks and help enhance employees’ self-confidence (Zheng et al., 2015), which will make
employees more dare to express their true ideas and suggestions. In general, while giving
developmental feedback, supervisor transmits the signal of improving ability and positive
progress to the subordinates, which sets an example of free expression and demonstrates that
it is safe to honestly express own opinions. This will have a positive impact on the
establishment of employees’ psychological safety. Therefore, we propose the following
hypothesis:
H2. Supervisor developmental feedback will be positively associated with subordinates’
psychological safety.
The promotion effect of psychological safety on employees’ innovative behavior is reflected in
the following three aspects. First, with the improvement of psychological safety, employees
become more active in interpersonal communication at work (Edmondson, 1999), therefore, they
may be more willing to share their opinions and suggestions, thus helping employees generate
new ideas. Second, psychological safety helps people reduce self-preservation, so that old
behaviors and methods can be adjusted and improved, and employees can implement new ideas.
Furthermore, as employees feel more psychologically safety, they are more willing to put in more
effort to take risks in innovative activities (Detert and Burris, 2007) because they are less afraid
of the negative consequences of failure (May et al., 2004). In summary, supervisor developmental Psychological
feedback not only directly affects employees’ psychological safety and employee innovative safety and face
behavior, but may also indirectly affect employee innovative behavior through psychological
safety perception. Therefore, we propose the following hypothesis:
orientation
H3. Psychological safety mediates the positive relationship between supervisor
developmental feedback and employee innovative behavior.
77
Moderating effect of face orientation
China is a society with a high degree of mutual concern. People care about others’
evaluation or feedback because these evaluations will bring about changes in social
prestige and honor, that is, face (Ho, 1976). Face is a typical symbol to explain
interpersonal interaction. According to the social cognitive theory, we infer that
employees’ different concerns about gain or loss face may influence the effect of
supervisor developmental feedback. On the one hand, employees with high acquisitive
face orientation may be eager to acquire more supervisor developmental feedback to
drive innovation and increase their face. They will see supervisor developmental
feedback as a valuable source of information and more actively receive or seek the
information content in the supervisor developmental feedback. Thus, high desire to gain
face may strengthen the positive effect of supervisor developmental feedback on
employees’ psychological safety.
Although supervisor developmental feedback focuses on growth and development, it may
also be accompanied by the correction of misconduct, that is, negative feedback (Zheng et al.,
2015). Employee with high protective face orientation may be afraid that negative feedback in
supervisor developmental feedback will make them lose face (Chou, 1996), that is, they tend to
view supervisor developmental feedback as a control over their behavior. As a result, these
employees often avoid feedback (Leung et al., 2014) or distort the information in the feedback
(Baron, 1993), which will make the feedback ambiguous and uncertain, and even provoke
negative emotional responses (Audia and Locke, 2003). Thus, high protective face orientation
may weaken the positive effect of supervisor developmental feedback on employees’
psychological safety. Therefore, we propose the following hypotheses
H4. Acquisitive face orientation moderates the positive relationship between supervisor
developmental feedback and employee psychological safety, such that the
relationship is stronger for employees of higher (vs. lower) acquisitive face
orientation.
H5. Protective face orientation moderates the positive relationship between supervisor
developmental feedback and employee psychological safety, such that the
relationship is weaker for employees of higher (vs. lower) protective face orientation.
To integrate the above relationships, we propose a moderated mediation framework.
Baumeister et al. (2005) found that face can interfere with the effectiveness of individuals in
receiving feedback information, thereby affecting individuals’ evaluation and cognition of
feedback, and then affecting individual behavior. Leung and Cohen (2011) found that fear of
losing face will restrict individual creativity. Specifically, employees with high acquisitive
face orientation are more likely to reap the power of example from the supervisor
developmental feedback and improve their sense of psychological security, which will
encourage employees to actively innovate. In contrast, employees with a high protective face
orientation regarding the supervisor developmental feedback as a kind of control, and even
weaken their sense of psychological security and inhibit innovative behavior because they
are fear of losing face. Therefore, we assume that:
JMP H6. Acquisitive face orientation moderates the indirect effect of supervisor
38,1 developmental feedback on employee innovative behavior via psychological
safety, such that the positive relationship is stronger for employees of higher (vs.
lower) desire to gain face.
H7. Protective face orientation moderates the indirect effect of supervisor developmental
feedback on employee innovative behavior via psychological safety, such that the
78 positive relationship is weaker for employees of higher (vs. lower) fear of losing face.
The theoretical framework is presented in Figure 1.

Method
Samples and procedures
The data were acquired from employees in the R&D departments of 15 manufacturing
companies in Zhejiang Province, China. To mitigate the confounding effect of socially
desirable response bias (Podsakoff et al., 2003), we distributed envelopes containing the
scales, confidentiality commitments and research instructions to the subjects on the spot, and
briefly explained the answering process, research purposes and confidentiality
commitments. After filling in the questionnaires, the respondents put the questionnaires
into the envelopes and handed them back. To reduce common method bias, questionnaires
were filled out separately by employees and their direct supervisors. First, employees fill in
personal information and daily face consciousness. Second, employees were asked to assess
the developmental feedback behavior of their immediate supervisors over the past six
months, and then assess their current psychological safety. Then, the direct supervisor was
asked to evaluate the employee’s recent innovative behavior. Although each supervisor rated
2 to 5 subordinates, there is no need to converge the data on team level because this study
focused on the psychology and behaviors of employees on the individual level.
A total of 370 questionnaires were distributed to employees and 302 valid questionnaires
were recovered. The response rate was 81.6%. Of the active participants, 42.1% were female
and 57.9% were male. In terms of age, 64.9% were under the age of 30 and 96.4% were under
the age of 40. In education, 78.1% have at least a bachelor’s degree. A large proportion
(43.7%) has worked with the organization for 1–2 years; 73.5% have worked with the
organization for at least five years.

Measurements
All the measurements were mature scales developed and validated by previous studies.
As the survey was conducted in Chinese and the measurements were developed in English,
a back-translation process was conducted to ensure the equivalence between the translations

Desire to gain face

Supervisor Psychological Employee

developmental feedback safety innovative behavior

Figure 1.
The theoretical
framework Fear of losing face
and the original items. A five-point Likert scale, ranging from “strongly disagree” (1) to Psychological
“strongly agree” (5), was used. safety and face
Supervisor developmental feedback. Supervisor developmental feedback was measured
with the three-item scale (α 5 0.737) from Zhou’s (2003). A sample item is “My direct
orientation
supervisor provides me with useful information on how to improve my job performance”.
Psychological safety. Psychological safety was measured with the five-item scale
(α 5 0.801) from Edmondson’s (1999). A sample item is “It is safe for me to speak up new
ideas around here”. 79
Face orientation. The two types of face orientation were measured with Chou’s (1996) and
Zhang et al.’s (2011) scales. Acquisitive face orientation contained three items (α 5 0.763).
A sample item is “I hope people think that I can do better than most others”. Protective face
orientation also contained three items (α 5 0.861). A sample item is “I do my best to hide my
weaknesses before others”.
Employee innovative behavior. Employee innovative behavior was measured with the five-
item scale (α 5 0.783) from Scott and Bruce’s (1994) and Zhou and George’s (2001). A sample
item is, “Creating new ideas for difficult issues”.
Control variables. In accordance with Zhou (2003), we controlled four demographic
characteristics, including gender, age, education and work tenure in the organization. Zhou
and George (2001) research confirmed that male employees have stronger innovative
behavior than female employees. Researchers have found that highly educated people are
more likely to form new ideas and use new work methods at work. With the increase of age
and working years, personal work ability strengthens, which may promote employee
innovation activities. Gender was coded as a dummy variable (0 5 male, 1 5 female). The age,
education and work tenure in the organization are divided into five grades.

Analysis strategy
Since the innovation behavior in this study is evaluated by the supervisor, which means the
nested nature of our data, we applied Mplus 8 (Muthen and Muthen, 1998/2017) software to
control for nesting effects, using a restricted maximum likelihood estimation method for the
analysis. We first conducted confirmatory factor analysis and tested the goodness-of-fit of the
comprehensive model. Then, hierarchical multiple regression and bootstrap methods were
applied to test hypotheses H1, H2, H3, H4 and H5. To further validate findings of moderated
mediation relationships, we used Preacher et al.’s (2007) statistical significance test, to
compute a z statistic for the conditional indirect effect (hypotheses H6 and H7).

Results
Validities and common method bias
The results of confirmatory factor analysis indicated that the hypothesized five-factor model
has a better fit (RMSEA 5 0.06, GFI 5 0.91, IFI 5 0.93 and CFI 5 0.93) than any of the
alternative models.
Considering the supervisor developmental feedback, psychological safety and employee
innovative behavior are all derived from employees’ self-reports. Harmon’s one-factor test
was used to assess the common method bias. We conducted a factor analysis with all items. A
total of five factors were drawn, explaining 63.63% variance, and the first factor explains
20.99% (not exceed 40%), which supported that common method bias was not severe
(Podsakoff and Organ, 1986).
Table 1 presents the means, standard deviations and correlations of the variables in the
study. Supervisor developmental feedback was positively related to both psychological
safety (r 5 0.15, p < 0.01) and employee innovative behavior (r 5 0.16, p < 0.01).
JMP Variables M SD 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
38,1
1. Gender 0.42 0.49
2. Age 2.29 0.92 0.08
3. Education 2.94 0.84 0.06 0.04
4. Work tenure 2.67 1.21 0.04 0.39** 0.00
5. SDF 3.65 0.71 0.01 0.02 0.09 0.04 (0.75)
80 6. AFO 3.69 0.74 0.12* 0.11 0.05 0.11 0.13* (0.77)
7. PFO 3.15 0.76 0.08 0.04 0.07 0.05 0.03 0.01 (0.86)
8. PS 3.84 0.56 0.10 0.04 0.04 0.71 0.15** 0.19** 0.05 (0.80)
Table 1.
Means, standard 9. IB 3.86 0.54 0.03 0.03 0.15* 0.02 0.16** 0.23** 0.06 0.24** (0.76)
deviations and inter- Note(s): N 5 302. *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01. Cronbach’s alphas are reported in parentheses on the main diagonal
correlations among SDF represents supervisor developmental feedback, AFO represents acquisitive face orientation, PFO
variables represents protective face orientation, PS represents psychological safety, IB represents innovative behavior

Hypotheses testing
We first tested hypotheses H1 and H2 with Mplus 8. As shown in model 2 in Table 2,
supervisor developmental feedback is positively related to individual employees’ innovative
behavior (β 5 0.172, p < 0.01). When all control variables are controlled, the main effect
between supervisor developmental feedback and innovative behavior is confirmed, and
hypothesis H1 is supported. As shown in model 6, supervisor developmental feedback is
positively correlated with psychological safety (β 5 0.157, p < 0.01), and hypothesis H2 is
supported. Next, continue to use Mplus 8 to test hypothesis 3. Model 3 shows that
psychological safety perception is positively related to employee innovative behavior
(β 5 0.223, p < 0.01). Compared with model 2, the positive correlation between developmental
feedback and innovation behavior in model 4 was deduced (β 5 0.104, p < 0.05). Therefore,
hypothesis H3 is preliminarily supported.
To further prove hypothesis H3, we followed Hayes and Preacher (2014) to adopt the
bootstrap method to test the indirect effect by using Mplus 8. The results showed that
supervisor developmental feedback was significantly indirectly related to innovation behavior
through psychological safety perception (β 5 0.04, p < 0.05), with a confidence interval (CI) of
95% excluding zero (CI 5 [0.01, 0.06]), while developmental feedback also had a significant
direct effect on innovation behavior (β 5 0.18, p < 0.05), with a CI of 95% excluding zero
(CI 5 [0.02, 0.19]), which indicates a partial mediation effect and hypothesis 3 is supported.

Innovative behavior Psychological safety

Variables Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Model 5 Model 6 Model 7 Model 8

Gender 0.03 0.03 0.05 0.05 0.10 0.11 0.13* 0.10

Age 0.03 0.03 0.05 0.03 0.08 0.08 0.07 0.10
Education 0.15* 0.16** 0.15** 0.10** 0.04 0.054 0.04 0.06
Work tenure 0.01 0.01 0.02 0.01 0.10 0.10 0.11 0.08
SDF 0.17** 0.10* 0.16** 0.13* 0.17**
PS 0.22*** 0.21***
AFO 0.19**
PFO 0.07
SDF 3 AFO 0.01
Table 2. SDF 3 PFO 0.12*
Regression results for R2 0.02 0.05 0.10 0.10 0.02 0.05 0.09 0.10
main study Note(s): N 5 302. *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001
To test hypotheses H4 and H5, we put moderating variable and interactive item into model 7 Psychological
and model 8. The results showed that the interaction effect between acquisitive face safety and face
orientation and supervisor developmental feedback was not significant (β 5 0.01, p > 0.05),
however, the interaction effect between protective face orientation and supervisor
orientation
developmental feedback was significant (β 5 0.12, p < 0.05). Figure 2 plotted the
interaction effect using one standard deviation above and below the mean of face orientation.
The positive effect of supervisor development feedback on psychological safety is not
affected by the level of employees’ acquisitive face orientation. However, the positive effect of 81
supervisor developmental feedback on psychological safety was stronger when employee
has lower level of protective face orientation. Thus, hypotheses H4 and H6 were not
supported, and hypothesis H5 was supported.
Furthermore, we introduced fear of losing face to the model to test the conditional
indirect effect through bootstrapping method on Mplus software. The results in Table 3
show that when employee with low level of fear of losing face, the indirect effect between the
supervisor developmental feedback and innovation behavior is positive and significant
(CI 5 [0.03, 0.11] does not include 0). When employee with high level of fear of losing face,
the indirect effect is not significant (CI 5 [ 0.03, 0.04] includes 0). And the difference
between the two effects (β 5 0.06, 95% CI 5 [ 0.13, 0.02]) was significant. In conclusion,
hypothesis H7 is supported.

4.5
Low AFO HighAFO

4.0
PS

3.5

3.0
Low SDF High SDF

4.5 Figure 2.
Low PFO High PFO Moderating effect of
acquisitive face
4.0 orientation and
protective face
PS

orientation on the
relationship between
3.5 supervisor
developmental
feedback and
3.0 psychological safety
Low SDF High SDF

Direct effect Total effect

Indirect effect 0.07** [0.03, 0.11] 0.20*** [0.10, 0.30] Table 3.

Direct effect 0.01 [ 0.03, 0.04] 0.15* [0.02, 0.24] Bootstrapping results
Differences 0.06* [ 0.13, 0.02] 0.06* [ 0.13, 0.02] for moderated
Note(s): N 5 302. *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001 mediating effect
JMP Discussion
38,1 Theoretical contributions
Based on the social cognitive theory, this study examines the mediating effect of
psychological safety in the relationship between supervisor developmental feedback and
employee innovative behavior, and reveals the moderating effect of face orientation. Previous
studies focused on the relationship between the nature of supervisor feedback and employee
innovation or performance (Belschak and Den Hartog, 2009; Dahling et al., 2017; Zhang et al.,
82 2018), but few studies provided evidence on how supervisor development feedback
influenced employee innovation behavior. Our research showed that supervisor development
feedback, as positive and supportive feedback from supervisors, promote the participation of
employees in innovation activities. It enriched the theoretical perspectives of supervisor
developmental feedback and employee innovation in the Chinese context.
In a high-context culture such as China, people’s communication styles are relatively
subtle, and rarely give positive or negative feedback directly to others. Therefore, supervisor
usually uses the developmental feedback to transmit information euphemistically, avoids
embarrassment and anxiety caused by giving employees extreme comments or evaluation.
This study found that after receiving developmental feedback from supervisors, employee
will generate a higher level of psychological safety, and thus they were more daring to
participate in innovative activities. This offers researchers a new perspective to understand
the mechanism of how supervisor developmental feedback influences employee innovative
behavior.
Previous studies have demonstrated that face will affect people’s psychological reaction
and change the effect of external stimuli (Wong and Ahuvia, 1998). We found that protective
face orientation has a negative moderating role on the relationship between supervisor
developmental feedback and employee innovative behavior, the positive influence of
supervisor developmental feedback on psychological safety was stronger for subordinates
with a lower protective face orientation. In China, people are influenced by collectivist cultural
values when they give feedback to others. So, they will try to maintain interpersonal harmony
and use more implicit communication ways (Tsang and Prendergast, 2009). When the direct
supervisor transmits information to employees through development feedback, the
information may imply unfinished tasks or substandard performance and other negative
information hints, which require subordinates to correct and remedy (Zheng et al., 2015). In
addition, this study did not find a moderating effect of acquisitive face orientation between
supervisor developmental feedback and psychological safety. The possible reason is that the
employee’s face-earning tendency fails to trigger the information characteristics of the
development feedback from the superiors.

Managerial implications
There are also some managerial implications from the results. First of all, since psychological
safety perception can convey the positive impact of supervisor developmental feedback on
employee innovative behavior, an organizational culture that can tolerate failure and
encourage innovation should be created in the company. Supervisors should create a
diversified, harmonious and dynamic creative work environment for employees. Secondly,
the organization must increase support for innovative activities, such as encouraging
employees to take risks, and fairly evaluate, reward and recognize their creative ideas; on the
other hand, they must give feedback through appropriate channels to let them lay down the
burden of losing face and feel confident and bold. It helps to strengthen the positive effects of
developmental feedback on employees’ psychological safety perception and innovative
behavior. Thirdly, we try to foster a good atmosphere for each employee to better participate
in innovation, however, employees have large individual differences in psychology, cognition
and emotion, and we must pay attention to the impact of these differences. In management Psychological
work, instead of simply emphasizing that the more developmental feedback the better, a safety and face
differentiated communication and feedback method should be adopted according to the
subordinate’s face orientation. When leaders in multinational enterprises try to give feedback
orientation
to their Chinese subordinates, they need to adjust the feedback method according to
employee’s face orientation, so as to find the best way to communicate and coordinate with
them. For those who are of low protective face orientation, leaders could promote their
innovative behavior by giving developmental feedback. However, for those who are of high 83
protective face orientation, it may be better to adopt other feedback methods, which should be
more private and positive.

Limitations
There are also some limitations in our research. First of all, we adopted a research design with
multiple data sources to reduce common method bias. And we have asked employees to
review their supervisor’s feedback behavior over the past six months, and then asked the
supervisor to evaluate the employee’s current innovation behavior. However, the surveys
were not conducted at different times, which may diminish our ability to achieve causal
inference from the data. Therefore, future studies can adopt a phased collection of data at
multiple time points, or use an experimental design to more accurately examine causality.
Second, the survey was only conducted in China, so the impact of supervisor developmental
feedback may vary in different cultures. Since our research has verified the special role of face
orientation in the context of Eastern culture, further studies can be carried out in Western
cultures to improve the generalization of the conclusions. Third, our survey targets
employees working in R&D, which may be more innovative than other job types, so follow-up
research in other sectors is needed to expand the generalizability of the findings. Fourth, we
also suggest that future research can further investigate the influence of supervisor
developmental feedback in other theoretical fields in the context of Chinese culture. Based on
Hofstede’s theory, the cultural values of collectivism put more emphasis on giving face to
others (Tsang and Prendergast, 2009). Affected by collectivist values, Chinese employees are
more willing to accept feedback from supervisors in a gentle and peaceful way (Goncalo and
Staw, 2006). Even if they give negative feedback to employee, they will express it in a subtle
way, which reduces their concerns about losing face. However, it is also necessary to consider
that some employees have a strong tendency to earn face. Developmental feedback with
praise and recognition may help improve the face of employees. Future research in these
fields must be very interesting and inspiring.

Conclusion
In conclusion, our study expands our understanding of the relationship between leadership
behavior and innovative behavior by exploring the mediating role of psychological safety
and the moderating role of face orientation from developmental feedback. Our research
contributes social cognitive theory, leadership behaviors, innovative behaviors and
conceptual distinctions between acquisitive face orientation and protective face
orientation, and offers some interesting directions for future research.

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About the authors Psychological
Liling Cai is an associate professor at Zhejiang Sci-Tech University. Her research interests include
organizational behavior, leadership, and innovation. safety and face
Zengrui Xiao is a lecturer at Zhejiang Sci-Tech University. His research interests include strategic orientation
management and organizational behavior.
Xiaofen Ji is a professor at Zhejiang Sci-Tech University. Her research interests include knowledge
management and organizational behavior. Xiaofen Ji is the corresponding author and can be contacted
at: xiaofenji@zstu.edu.cn 87

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