Hiding Information Under Threat: How and When Leader Threat Perception Relates to Employee Change Adaptivity
Prof. Xueqing FAN
Assistant Professor
Antai College of Economics and Management
Shanghai Jiao Tong University
Date: 31 March 2026 (Tuesday)
Time: 10:30-12:00
Venue: E22-G008
Host: Prof. Liwen ZHANG, Associate Professor in Management
Abstract
Organizational change often evokes threat experiences that hinder employees’ adaptivity. While research emphasizes the importance of transparent communication for mitigating threat perceptions, information hiding is also being deployed by practitioners to manage employees’ change reactions. Drawing on gatekeeping theory, we focus in the present study on team leaders’ role as gatekeepers and investigated how their threat perceptions relate to information hiding. We also examined the downstream effects of leader information hiding on mitigating employees’ experiences of threat. In one field study (Study 1) and three experiments (Studies 2A, 2B, 2C), we found that leaders’ threat perception was indirectly and negatively associated with employee adaptivity, via leader information hiding and employee threat perception, among leaders who had good relationships with their followers.
Speaker
Prof. Xueqing (Skye) FAN is an assistant professor at Antai College of Economics and Management, Shanghai Jiao Tong University. She joined Shanghai Jiao Tong University in 2023 and received the Shanghai Baiyulan Talent Award in 2024. She holds a Ph.D. from Rutgers University, School of Management and Labor Relations. Her research interests focus on compensation, performance dynamics, and leadership behaviors. Her research has been published in outlets such as Journal of Management, Journal of Organizational Behavior, and Human Resource Management. She has led and participated in several projects funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC). She has also provided consulting services to several companies and institutions such as China Youth Development Foundation.
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