How Leaders deal with Pro-Social Rule Breaking: Unravelling their rationales for response behavior

Abstract

In this paper, we explore leaders’ rationales for their responses to pro-social rule-breaking by their subordinates. Pro-social rule breaking describes a violation of formal organizational rules but with a good intention. Demonstrating appropriate leadership behavior in such a situation is a challenging task. On the one hand, leaders are expected to recognize the good intention of their subordinates, on the other hand, they are responsible for ensuring that rules are respected. Our study aims to improve our understanding of this dilemma situation of leaders by identifying key elements that leaders use for the rationalization of their behavior. In doing so, we employed a qualitative experimental design with vignettes. Our findings suggest that leaders generally consider two types of responses: 'clarifying and supporting' or 'clarifying and sanctioning'. Their rationales for these responses are based on two different levels of reflection. At the first level, they will consider cues directly related to the pro-social rule breaking, such as the outcome, the perceived intention, the severity, and the communication of the rule violation. However, these reflections will be mitigated or reinforced by more general cues on a second level like the organizational culture, the leader-follower relationship, and the structural setting.