Liang Lindie H, Nishioka Midori, Evans Rochelle, Brown Douglas J, Shen Winny, Lian Huiwen
Lazaridis School of Business and Economics, Wilfrid Laurier University, 75 University Avenue West, Waterloo, ON N2L 3C5, Canada.
Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada.
J Leadersh Organ Stud. 2022 Feb;29(1):33-72. doi: 10.1177/15480518211066074. Epub 2021 Dec 27.
Although a litany of theoretical accounts exists to explain why mistreated employees engage in counterproductive work behaviors (CWBs), little is known about whether these mechanisms are complementary or mutually exclusive, or the effect of context on their explanatory strength. To address these gaps, this meta-analytic investigation tests four theoretically-derived mechanisms simultaneously to explain the robust relationship between leader mistreatment and employee CWB: (1) a social exchange perspective, which argues that mistreated employees engage in negative reciprocal behaviors to counterbalance experienced mistreatment; (2) a justice perspective, whereby mistreated employees experience moral outrage and engage in retributive behaviors against the organization and its members; (3) a stressor-emotion perspective, which suggests that mistreated employees engage in CWBs to cope with their negative affect; and (4) a self-regulatory perspective, which proposes that mistreated employees are simply unable to inhibit undesirable behaviors. Moreover, we also examine whether the above model holds across cultures that vary on power distance. Our meta-analytic structural equation model demonstrated that all but the justice mechanism significantly mediated the relationship between leader mistreatment and employee CWBs, with negative affect emerging as the strongest explanatory mechanism in both high and low power distance cultures. Given these surprising results, as the stressor-emotion perspective is less frequently invoked in the literature, this paper highlights not only the importance of investigating multiple mechanisms together when examining the leader mistreatment-employee CWB relationship, but also the need to develop more nuanced theorizing about these mechanisms, particularly for negative affect.
尽管存在大量理论解释为何受虐待的员工会出现反生产工作行为（CWB），但对于这些机制是互补还是相互排斥，以及情境对其解释力的影响，我们却知之甚少。为填补这些空白，本元分析研究同时检验了四种理论推导机制，以解释领导虐待与员工CWB之间的紧密关系：（1）社会交换视角，该视角认为受虐待的员工会采取负面互惠行为来平衡所经历的虐待；（2）公平视角，即受虐待的员工会产生道德义愤，并对组织及其成员采取报复行为；（3）压力源-情绪视角，该视角表明受虐待的员工会通过CWB来应对其负面影响；（4）自我调节视角，该视角提出受虐待的员工只是无法抑制不良行为。此外，我们还考察了上述模型在权力距离不同的文化中是否成立。我们的元分析结构方程模型表明，除公平机制外，所有机制都显著中介了领导虐待与员工CWB之间的关系，在高权力距离文化和低权力距离文化中，负面影响都是最强的解释机制。鉴于这些惊人的结果，由于压力源-情绪视角在文献中较少被提及，本文不仅强调了在研究领导虐待与员工CWB关系时共同考察多种机制的重要性，还强调了对这些机制进行更细致入微的理论构建的必要性，尤其是针对负面影响。
