2025 Theses Doctoral

Promoting employee responsibility-taking: An examination of the situational and individual antecedents of responsibility-taking behaviors

Zlupko, Gian Michael

This dissertation examines the individual and situational antecedents of employee responsibility-taking behaviors. Despite their importance for work performance, little research has explored the factors that encourage employees to self-regulate these demanding behaviors, which require fulfilling existing commitments and proactively taking ownership for emerging tasks. Drawing on self-determination theory, this dissertation investigates the impact of leadership style on responsibility-taking. Additionally, drawing regulatory mode theory, the effects of goal pursuit strategies were examined, both as stable individual dispositions and as situationally-induced motivational states.

Across two studies, including a cross-sectional survey of full-time workers and a randomized experiment, we found that autonomy-supportive leadership promoted responsibility-taking, while controlling leadership did not. Furthermore, our findings showed that this effect was mediated by employees’ perceptions that their leader satisfied their core psychological needs for competence and connection. In addition, these benefits were most pronounced for individuals primed to work with urgency, who were less willing to take responsibility when leaders failed to provide a compelling rationale for the work’s importance. By contrast, leadership style did not significantly affect participants’ willingness to engage in responsibility-taking behavior among those primed for deliberative, careful work. These findings highlight key motivational mechanisms underlying responsibility-taking and clarify the conditions under which leadership support is most influential.