The Study On The Influence Mechanism Of Goal Setting On Employees’ Workplace Deception

Workplace deceptive behavior is an unethical behavior performed by employees to gain an unfair advantage or to obtain undeserved benefits.This behavior not only affects individual employee performance and overall organizational performance,but also affects organizational fairness and operating costs,and is concerned with the successful achievement of organizational goals,which has been widely concerned by academics.Goal setting,as a common management tool,has not been explored by scholars.Therefore,this paper will explore the impact of goal setting on employees’ workplace deceptive behaviors and the mechanism of its effect.In this paper,goal setting refers specifically to the setting of goal difficulty.Two different research designs,experimental method and questionnaire,were used to explore how goal setting affects employees’ workplace deception behavior.Study 1 examined the effect of goal setting on workplace deception and the mediating role of workplace anxiety through the experimental method;Study 2 tested the full model hypothesis of this paper through a questionnaire survey after adding the moderating variables of perception of organizational support and moral defense tendency.The results of the study showed that(1)goal setting positively influenced employees’ workplace deception;(2)workplace anxiety partially mediated the relationship between goal setting and workplace deception;and(3)moral defense tendency positively moderated the relationship between goal setting and workplace deception.The higher the individual’s moral defense tendency,the stronger the influence of goal setting on workplace deception;(4)the perceived organizational support negatively moderates the relationship between goal setting and workplace anxiety.The higher the employees’ perceived organizational support,the weaker the effect of goal setting on workplace anxiety.This paper not only enriches the study of antecedent variables of workplace deception behavior from the theoretical aspect,but also provides a reference for organizations to reduce employees’ deception behavior from the practical aspect.