A Research on the Motivating Mechanism of Inclusive Leadership on Employees’ Constructive Deviance

Abstract

Previous studies on employees’ deviance mainly focus on its disruptive aspects, while employees’ constructive deviance, as a kind of extra-role behavior that is beneficial to the organization, has long been neglected and studies on it are relatively scarce. The proactive motivation model holds that the leadership style is an important working situational factor to motivate employees to engage in proactive behavior. Inclusive leadership, as a kind of supportive leadership style, plays an important role in promoting employees’ constructive deviance. Based on the proactive motivation model, this paper mainly focuses on the relationship between inclusive leadership and employees’ constructive deviance, the mediating role of psychological ownership and the moderating role of employees’ traditionality in the Chinese context. In this paper, 253 questionnaires were distributed to employees from high-tech enterprises and manufacturing industry. After excluding invalid questionnaires, 230 valid sample data were obtained. In the samples, 46.5% are male; most of the participants range from 26–35 years old; most of the participants have been working more than 4 years; most of the participants have college degrees. To examine the distinctiveness of variables, this paper conducts a confirmatory factor analysis by using AMOS 17.0. This paper also conducts a multiple regression analysis to test the mediating and moderating effects by using SPSS 17.0. Results show that inclusive leadership has a significantly positive effect on employees’ constructive deviance, and psychological ownership fully mediates the relationship between them. Employees’ traditionality negatively moderates the relationship between them, that is to say, the lower employees’ traditionality is, the stronger the effect of inclusive leadership on employees’ constructive deviance is. There are two primary theoretical contributions in this study. Firstly, the findings enrich the theoretical foundation of the influence research of inclusive leadership on employees’ behavior. In previous studies, scholars tend to use the social exchange theory to construct the theoretical framework, while this paper constructs a research framework between inclusive leadership and employees’ constructive deviance based on the proactive motivation model. Secondly, the findings expand the research perspectives of employees’ constructive deviance. This paper takes inclusive leadership as an important factor which can motivate employees’ constructive deviance and enriches the research perspectives of employees’ constructive deviance. Meanwhile, the findings shed light on the mediating transmission mechanism and boundary conditions of inclusive leadership influencing employees’ constructive deviance. In addition, there are several limitations in this study. Firstly, the use of cross-sectional data implies that cause-effect relations cannot be inferred from the findings. Future research should adopt longitudinal data to fully address the issue of causality. Secondly, there may be differences in understanding inclusiveness between Chinese and Western cultures, so the connotations and dimensions of inclusive leadership in the Chinese context should be explored in the future. Third, this paper mainly explores the influencing factors of employees’ constructive behavior, but does not involve the influencing effects of employees’ constructive behavior. In the future, we can explore the double-edged sword effect of employees’ constructive deviance.