Study On A Typology Of Leader Deviance Behavior And Its Effect On Team Effectiveness In Chinese Organizations

Researchers of human resources and organizational behavior have paid much more attention to "the dark side of organizational behavior" in recent two decades, in which workplace deviance behavior is of representative. Nevertheless, these studies generally overlooked leader deviance behavior, while focused on the general staff in organizations. Some literatures on leadership (e.g. abusive supervision) have explored a slight part of leader deviance behavior, but ignored the nature of deviance behavior, just being from subordinates' perspective as the victims. In fact, leaders who have power and privilege are predisposed to engage in deviant behavior, which brings a great challenge to organization management. The concept and practice of team is pervasive in organizations at present, as teams offer an effective way to improve organization performance. Leadership is the key to achieve team goal, therefore, it is necessary to examine the relationship between leader deviance behavior and team effectiveness and its mechanism.In the current study we aimed to investigate "how leader deviance behavior affects team effectiveness". We also adopted a temporally lagged design (i.e. carrying out questionnaire survey at multiple time points) and multi-source measurement (i.e. criterion variables are evaluated by team leaders while predictor variables are evaluated by team members), with a plurality of employee samples and team samples. Specifically, we addressed five unresolved sub-issues, such as①the typology of leader deviance behavior,②the antecedents of leader deviance behavior in Chinese organizations,③the influence of leader deviance behavior on team-level outcomes,④the mechanism of leader deviance behavior on team effectiveness, and⑤the moderating effect of traditional culture on the relationship between leader deviance behavior and team effectiveness.Results of the first study confirmed that leader deviance behavior can be captured with two general factors:occupational and managerial deviance. Results of the second study showed that leaders are more likely to engage in occupational and managerial deviance in traditional SOEs (state-owned enterprise) than in non-SOEs. In addition, ethical leadership is negatively related to occupational and managerial deviance, respectively, which is moderated by collectivism in such a way that ethical leadership is less negatively associated with managerial deviance when collectivism is high than low. Results of the third study indicated that managerial deviance is positively and occupational deviance is negatively related to team effectiveness, which is also mediated by team social capital and team psychological capital. Furthermore, the relationships between both occupational and managerial deviance and team effectiveness are moderated by traditionality in such a way that occupational deviance is more negatively and managerial deviance is more positively associated with team effectiveness when traditionality is high than low.Our findings extend previous research in several important ways. Firstly, this study integrates workplace deviance behavior and leadership behavior literatures, with considering both "other-focus" and "self-focus" intentions by going beyond previous assumption that deviance is entirely motivated by self-interest. Secondly, it examines antecedents to leader deviance behavior with a Chinese-organization-based perspective in mind, which also contributes to the understanding of the relationship between positive and negative leadership. Thirdly, it tests team-level outcomes of leader deviance behavior, which integrates the study of leadership and of team and adds to the emerging body of knowledge on the comprehensive consequences of leader deviance behavior. Furthermore, it elucidates team social capital and team psychological capital as mediators of the influence of leader deviance behavior on team effectiveness, adding value to the both independent literatures. Finally, it enrich the knowledge about the boundary conditions of effectiveness of leader deviance behavior by focusing on Chinese traditional culture value, which is not only helpful to understand the role of leader deviance behavior on team effectiveness deeply, but also contribute to the study of Chinese culture.