It is not only what you do, but why you do it: The role of attribution in employees' emotional and behavioral responses to illegitimate tasks

Abstract

Illegitimate tasks are tasks that violate the norms governing what an employee can reasonably be expected to do. Although extant research has demonstrated the link between illegitimate tasks and negative emotions, little is known about why illegitimate tasks are associated with various emotions and subsequent behaviors in employees. Building on the cognitive appraisal theory of emotion and the attributional perspective, we proposed two negative attributions for illegitimate tasks (i.e., negative competence attribution and negative relationship attribution) and examined how they are differentially associated with employees' emotions and behaviors when asked to perform illegitimate tasks. The results of Study 1 (a scenario-based experiment using 400 employees) and Study 2 (a three-wave survey of 519 employees), which were both conducted in China, show that when faced with illegitimate tasks that employees attribute to the insufficiency of their competence (i.e., negative competence attribution), they are more likely to experience shame, and when employees attribute being assigned illegitimate tasks to undesirable relationships with their leader and colleagues (i.e., negative relationship attribution), they are more likely to feel angry. Shame and anger are further related to employees' work and social withdrawal behavior, respectively. This study showcases the role of attribution in employee responses to illegitimate tasks and provides an attribution perspective on why illegitimate tasks are associated with various emotions and behaviors among employees.