Spare the rod and spoil the child? A study on employee workplace deviant behavior

Purpose - In the background of the post-financial crisis era and the transition of China’s economic development, the frequent occurrence of workplace deviant behavior in the economic field, such as stealing and bribery, caused a huge impact on the enterprise. In recent years, the deviant behavior of employees has been increased noticeably. The purpose of this study is to explore the influence of paternalistic leadership on employee deviant behavior in workplace. To have a deep understanding of the relationship between paternalistic leadership and employee deviant behavior, the author’s design rule-oriented ethical climate and self-interest-oriented ethical climate as two mediators in this research model. Design/methodology/approach - Based on social learning theory and stressor-emotion model, this study conducts an investigation of influence mechanism between paternalistic leadership and workplace deviant behavior. Time-lagged data was collected from 226 employees from six cities in China. To test the hypothesis that the authors developed in this paper, the authors use empirical models from the existing literature about paternalistic leadership on employee deviant behavior. They establish multiple linear regressions to test the hypotheses. Findings - This study reveals the direct effect of authoritarian leadership on employee deviant behavior and the moderated roles of benevolent leadership and moral leadership, also analysis the mediated mechanism of self-interest-oriented ethical climate and rule-oriented ethical climate. The results show that the higher the degree of authority leaders show in the organization, the easier to stimulate workplace deviance of employee, self-interest-oriented ethical climate and rule-oriented ethical climate play mediated role between authoritarian leadership and workplace deviant behavior. The interaction of benevolent leadership and moral leadership with authoritarian leadership can weaken the self-interest-oriented ethical climate but has nothing to do with rule-oriented ethical climate. Originality/value - This study has three main contributions to the previous literature. First, this study explores the relationship between authoritarian leadership and employee workplace deviance, which could enrich the research on these negative behaviors in the Chinese context. Second, this study unpacks the “black box” in which authoritarian leadership influences employee workplace deviant behavior. Third, this study further examines the impacts of different combinations of the three factors of paternalistic leadership.