Influence Mechanism Of Leader-Member Guanxi On Workplace Deviant Behavior Among Construction Workers

Workplace deviant behavior among construction workers causes waste of resources and endangers the safety,cost,schedule,and quality of construction projects,and has become one of the key risks of construction projects.Therefore,it is very necessary to clarify the occurrence mechanism of workplace deviant behavior among construction workers and provide a theoretical basis for its effective control.The temporary,one-off,unique,and mobility characteristics of construction projects,as well as the low contract signing rate of construction workers,make the formal governance mechanism for workplace deviant behavior in the construction industry weaker than other industries.Therefore,the informal governance mechanism represented by leadermember guanxi may have more important impact on the workplace deviant behavior among construction workers.However,there still lacks a theoretical explanation of the influence mechanism of leader-member guanxi on workplace deviant behavior.Therefore,this dissertation explores the occurrence mechanism of workplace deviant behavior among construction workers with leader-member guanxi as the core.First,most of the existing studies only focus on the influence of leader-member exchange on workplace deviant behavior,ignoring the role of leader-member guanxi which represents the personal relationship between supervisors and subordinates,and do not consider the group level influence of leader-member guanxi differentiation.In response to this shortcoming,this dissertation clarified the key influence position of leader-member guanxi in the occurrence of workplace deviant behavior among construction workers through literature research,expert interviews and the DEMATEL method,and then constructed the interaction model of leader-member guanxi and leader-member exchange,and the cross-layer interaction model of leader-member guanxi and leader-member guanxi differentiation.The models were tested by regression analysis and hierarchical linear modeling.It was found that leader-member guanxi can significantly inhibit the workplace deviant behavior among construction workers.At the same time,leader-member exchange can strengthen the suppression effect,while leader-member guanxi differentiation can weaken the suppression effect.The results reveal the direct influence of leader-member guanxi on the workplace deviant behavior among construction workers,as well as the interaction effect of leader-member exchange and leader-member guanxi differentiation.Second,the existing researches mostly regard leader-member guanxi as a variable of single attribute,and the researches on its influence mechanism are mostly single path.However,leader-member guanxi has two attributes of affection and instrumentality.Different attribute meets different needs,and have different effects on the workplace deviant behavior among construction workers.Giving this shortcoming,this dissertation constructed a dual-path model of the influence of leader-member guanxi on workplace deviant behavior among construction workers,and then collected empirical data to test the hypothetical model through structural equation modeling.Results found that leader-member guanxi affects the interpersonal workplace deviant behavior among construction workers through the partial mediation of psychological security,and affects the organizational workplace deviant behavior among construction workers through the complete mediation of access to resources.The results clarified the path through which leader-member guanxi influences workplace deviant behavior among construction workers,and revealed the underlying influence mechanism of leadermember guanxi on the workplace deviant behavior among construction workersThird,the workplace deviant behavior among construction workers is the result of a dynamic system driven by multiple factors.However,most existing studies only focus on the static impact of a single factor,ignoring the dynamic linkage of many antecedent variables of workplace deviant behavior among construction workers in this system.Giving this shortcoming,this dissertation established a causal relationship diagram of workplace deviant behavior among construction workers with leader-member guanxi as the core,generated a system flowchart,constructed simulation equations based on empirical data,and then embedded the workplace deviant behavior among construction workers into the dynamic behavior generation system and conducted simulation analysis.It was found that due to the lack of leader-member guanxi during the initial stage,the workplace deviant behavior among construction workers showed an upward trend.However,as leader-member guanxi steadily improved,the increase in the level of workplace deviant behavior would gradually slow down.In the later period,workplace deviant behavior declined steadily.In addition,the initial level of interpersonal workplace deviant behavior among construction workers and the rate of its decrease in the later period were both higher than organizational workplace deviant behavior.The results reveal the dynamic linkage mechanism of the multiple antecedent variables in the dynamic system of workplace deviant behavior among construction workers with leader-member guanxi as the core.To sum up,this dissertation reveals the occurrence mechanism of workplace deviant behavior among construction workers with leader-member guanxi as the core,enriches the theoretical research on leader-member guanxi,and provides construction project managers with practical guidance for pre-controlling of the workplace deviant behavior among construction workers.