主动性人格会影响组织越轨行为吗——基于社会交换理论的研究

Would Proactive Personality Influence Deviance Behavior?A Social Exchange Perspective

现有关于主动性人格的研究大多在探讨其和积极结果的关系,却忽略了它对越轨行为可能会产生的影响。考虑到越轨行为对组织的损害,这个影响是否、何时以及为什么存在值得深入探讨。基于社会交换理论,本文提出授权型领导和辱虐型领导会通过改变主动性人格与回报动机的关系来影响越轨行为。即基于互惠原则,高主动性的员工会更想回报授权型领导,从而减少做出越轨行为的可能性;但是他们并不想回报辱虐型领导,从而增加做出越轨行为的可能性。基于对在三个时间点收集到的匹配数据的分析,本文发现调节中介关系成立:只有当授权型领导高或者辱虐型领导低的时候,主动性人格才对越轨行为有负的间接效应。该研究丰富了有关主动性人格后果的研究,并且对管理高主动性员工以及减少越轨行为的实践也有启示。

Scholars have showed great scholarly passion in proactive personality.Existing studies mainly focused on the bright side of this personality,showing that it has positive relationships with various favorable work and vocational outcomes.Only until recently have scholars began to question would this personality be detrimental.Some studies demonstrated that under certain situations,proactive personality would not be significantly or negatively related to favorable outcomes.Despite the rich findings,existing studies ignored the possibility that proactive people might perform unfavorable behavior at work.The current paper focused on deviance behavior,i.e.,the voluntary behavior of organizational members that violates significant organizational norms,and in so doing,threatens the well-being of the organization and/or its members,as the outcome,because it casts significant cost to both individual career development and organizational performance.Based on the social exchange theory,this paper proposed that empowering leadership and abusive supervision would influence the relationship between proactive personality and deviance behavior.Specifically,social exchange theory articulates that people would repay the good or bad deeds of another party.Proactive people like to obtain autonomy,social dominance and support for change at work.Empowering leaders share power with subordinates.Subordinates are likely to feel free to act on their wills and be supported by their leaders.In this sense,under the supervision by empowering leaders,proactive people would develop a strong sense of obligation to reciprocate their leaders,thus reducing their deviance behavior.By contrast,abusive supervision exert control on their subordinates through showing continuous hostility.Subordinates are likely to feel that they have to bend tot their leaders and would not get support for their initiatives.Under such a situation,proactive people would not feel obligated to reciprocate their leaders,which increases the possibility that they perform deviance behavior.In short,based on social exchange theory,this paper proposed a moderated mediation model in which empowering leadership and abusive supervision casts contrasting moderation effects on the indirect influence proactive personality has on deviance behavior through felt obligation to reciprocate.The model was examined using a three-wave data.Results showed that both empowering leadership and abusive supervision had significant moderation effects.In detail,as the level of empowering leadership increased,the indirect effect of proactive personality on deviance behavior changed from being insignificant to significantly negative.By contrast,as the level of abusive supervision increased,the indirect effect changed from being significantly negative to insignificant.When including both moderators into analyses,results showed that only empowering leadership had a significant moderation effect.Notably,even after controlling the mediation effect of felt obligation to reciprocate,proactive personality had a significant positive direct effect on deviance behavior.This study extends existing studies about the dark side of proactive personality.The analyses revealed that under certain situations,the indirect effect of proactive personality on deviance behavior became insignificant.Especially,there was a direct positive relationship after the social exchange mechanism was controlled.In sum,these results demonstrated that sometimes proactive personality could harm organizations through negative behaviors.This study also enriches the understandings of the relationship between leadership and proactive personality.Previous studies mainly found substitution effects based on the rationale that proactive personality captures human agency.Taking a relational perspective,this study,based on social exchange theory,showed that leadership could exaggerate or buffer the influence of proactive personality.Last,this study helps scholars better understand the individual differences in deviance behavior.Previous studies demonstrated that personalities could influence this behavior,but they mainly focused on the dark triad,big five,and dispositional affectivity.Proactive personality is different from them because it captures one’s natural tendency to manipulate environment.As the study showed,deviance behavior varies across different levels of proactive personality.