How and When Leader-Member Exchange Leads to Followers’ Deviant Behaviors: A Power Perspective

Abstract

Although leader-member exchange (LMX) has been widely studied, little is known about its potential effects on employees’ deviant behaviors. Drawing on the power perspective, we develop a multi-level moderated mediation model to examine how and when LMX might affect employees’ destructive and constructive deviance behaviors within a team context. Using a sample of 467 employees working in 115 teams from 9 companies, we found that a team member’s within-group relative LMX (RLMX) was positively related to his/her psychological power. Psychological power, in turn, had a positive relation with destructive deviance for employees with low moral identity and employees under low levels of team monitoring. This relation did not emerge for employees under high levels of team monitoring. Moreover, for employees with high moral identity, psychological power was negatively related to destructive deviance but positively related to constructive deviance. We discuss both the theoretical and practical implications of our findings.