Does Subordinate Creative Deviance Evoke Supervisor Undermining?

In organizational research,scholars concerned excessively with the overt,radical actions like abusive supervision,yet covert,incremental actions like supervisor undermining received far less research attention.Supervisor undermining refers to the behavior intended to hinder,over time,a subordinate's ability to establish and maintain positive interpersonal relationships,work-related success,and favorable reputation.It can take a range of forms and may vary in the manner which it damages a relationship or a reputation.For example,undermining may take the form of direct actions,such as intentionally spreading rumors about a person,rejecting someone absolutely,or scorning someone's ideas.In addition,undermining may also be accomplished through withholding,such as withholding some information or failing to defend someone.Empirical research suggested that supervisor undermining may cause negative influence on organizations as well as employees.Therefore,many scholars made a call for developing richer antecedent models of supervisor undermining.To date,existing research suggested that envy,relationship conflict,moral disengagement,and bottom-line mentality can evoke supervisor undermining,few considered the importance role of subordinates' behaviors in shaping supervisor undermining.To address this issue,this study aims to investigate the effects of subordinates' creative deviance on supervisor undermining as long as its mediating mechanism and boundary condition.Specifically,we focus on testing the mediating role of identity threat and the moderating role of managerial self-efficacy.A field study was adopted to test hypotheses.Based on sample 123 dyads of subordinates and their supervisors in China,we got three conclusions by using a series of regression analysis: 1)subordinates' creative deviance was positively related to supervisor undermining.2)such relationship was partially mediated by supervisor perceived identity threat.3)supervisors' managerial self-efficacy moderated the relationship between creative deviance and identity threat,such that this relationship was only significant when supervisors' managerial self-efficacy was low.Furthermore,we used experiment-based methods to retest the hypothesis,and the result from the regression analysis verified the hypothesis.Our findings offer several important theoretical and practical implications.First,our research extends previous studies on the antecedents of supervisor undermining by examining the relationship between creative deviance and supervisor undermining,addressing the call “to develop richer antecedent models of mistreatment”.Second,through exploring the mediating role of identity threat,this study advances our understanding regarding the underlying mechanism that transmits the predictive effects of creative deviance to supervisor undermining.Third,we further test the moderating effect of managerial self-efficacy,which reveal unique boundary conditions for creative deviance to influence identity threat.This can contribute to our knowledge about when creative deviance may evoke supervisor undermining.Beyond the theoretical implications highlighted above,there are a number of practical strategies that employees and organizations can use to deal with supervisor undermining.On the one hand,subordinates are encouraged to put forward innovative ideas in the way which supervisors can be accepted readily.On the other hand,organizations can renew supervisors' ideology,eliminate the notion of be promoted according to status,build the notion of equality of status of supervisors and subordinates to fit today' radical change.Finally,limitations and directions for future research are discussed.