Why Does Distributed Leadership Foster or Hamper Bootlegging Behavior of Employees: The Role of Exploratory-Exploitative Learning Tension and Paradox Mindset

Bootlegging innovation, the act of developing an idea by an employee even when it was banned by the leader, is a novel and interesting construct that can bring both positive and negative outcomes to organizations. It is of interest to the organizations, leaders within those organizations, and the employers. Drawing upon paradox theory and organizational learning perspectives, we theorize and test a moderated mediation model to explore the relationship between distributed leadership and bootlegging behavior. We use a three-stage questionnaire method to collect data from 517 employees of information technology enterprises in China. Our results corroborate the following: (a) distributed leadership is positively related to the bootlegging behavior of employees; (b) exploratory-exploitative learning tension mediates the linkage between the distributed leadership and the bootlegging behavior of employees; (c) employee’s paradox mindset moderates the positive relationship between exploratory-exploitative learning tensions and the bootlegging behavior and also moderates the positive direct relationship between the distributed leadership and employee’s bootlegging behavior, so that the relationship is amplified when paradox mindset is strong. We discuss the implications for theory development and practice concerning how distributed leadership can influence personal bootlegging behavior.