Chenhong Hu’s research while affiliated with Nanjing University and other places

Introduction Impoverished leadership, as a form of unethical leadership behavior, can have a wide range of negative impacts. It not only affects team morale, work efficiency, cohesion, and trust but also directly influences organizational performance, reputation, and the leader’s own career development. However, previous research has rarely explored the antecedents of impoverished leadership. Methods Based on social cognitive theory and conservation of resources theory, this study investigated the impact of error aversion climate on impoverished leadership with mixed methodologies (i.e., a scenario experiment and a questionnaire survey). Results The results showed that error aversion climate positively influences impoverished leadership; moral disengagement and ego depletion serve as mediators between error aversion climate and impoverished leadership. Besides, regulatory focus moderate the relationship between error aversion climate and moral disengagement (ego depletion). Specifically, when leaders have high prevention regulatory focus and high promotion regulatory focus, the relationship between error aversion climate and moral disengagement (ego depletion) is stronger. Regulatory focus also moderate the indirect effect of error aversion climate on impoverished leadership through moral disengagement (ego depletion). The indirect effect of error aversion climate on impoverished leadership is stronger when leaders have high prevention regulatory focus and high promotion regulatory focus. Discussion The findings provide theoretical guidance for interventions to reduce impoverished leadership and offer new insights for promoting organizational sustainability.

Greenwashing has become a common way in which many enterprises address expectations related to corporate social responsibility. As an abnormal and fake type of social responsibility behavior, greenwashing causes many problems, thus highlighting the importance of exploring the impact of corporate greenwashing. However, previous studies have mainly examined the impacts of greenwashing on enterprises, industry, and society, and the impact of greenwashing on individual employee behavior, which is important with regard to the sustainability of the enterprise, remains limited. The main purpose of this study is to explore how perceived greenwashing affects employee green behavior (EGB). Based on the stimulus–organism–response theory and social cognitive theory, a two‐wave survey was conducted to investigate 232 Chinese enterprise employees. The impact of perceived greenwashing on EGB was analyzed. The mediating role of green organizational identity (GOI) and the moderating role of self‐serving leadership in this context were examined. The results reveal that perceived greenwashing is negatively related to EGB. Furthermore, GOI mediates the direct relationship between perceived greenwashing and EGB. Self‐serving leadership weakens the positive relationship between GOI and EGB. This study thus develops a theoretical model of greenwashing and EGB. It also provides empirical evidence that can support attempts to promote EGB.

Previous research on antecedents to constructive deviance remains scattered and inclusive. Our study conceptualizes constructive deviance from the perspective of ethical decision making and explores its antecedents, mechanism, and conditions. Drawing on moral licensing theory and social information processing theory, we propose that group citizenship behavior facilitates moral justification and constructive deviance when environmental dynamism is high and inhibits them when it is low; and moral justification fully mediates the relationship between the interaction of group citizenship behavior and environmental dynamism and constructive deviance. With two-wave panel data collected from 339 employees in 54 groups of five service companies in retailing, finance, and tourism randomly selected from three provinces in southern China, these hypotheses are all supported empirically. Our findings broaden the antecedents and occurrence mechanism of constructive deviance through an ethical decision-making lens. Our study contributes to the moral licensing literature by enriching the sources of moral licensing in the workplace and empirically demonstrating that moral justification may function as an underlying mechanism of moral licensing.

Extant research on work-related identity discrepancy mostly has probed its effects on employees’ attitudes and emotions but has paid little attention to its impact on employee behaviors. Drawing on self-discrepancy theory, we examined the influencing mechanism and conditions of work-related identity discrepancy on employee innovation behavior. With data collected from 563 employees who personally experienced leadership transition in the workplace, we found that work-related identity discrepancy predicts employee innovation behavior through workplace anxiety. We also discovered that employees’ personality traits—promotion regulatory focus and prevention regulatory focus in particular—can intensify or buffer the negative relationship between work-related identity discrepancy and employee innovation behavior. We further discuss the conceptual and practical implications of these findings.

This research investigates the role of emotional exhaustion and supervisor incivility in explaining the relationship between work-related identity discrepancy and counterproductive work behavior. Based on resource conservation theory, our study hypothesizes a moderated mediation model that work-related identity discrepancy impacts counterproductive work behavior through emotional exhaustion, and supervisor incivility is deemed as the boundary condition in the indirect effect. Drawing on a sample of 863 employees, we found support for the moderated mediation model in which the positive relationship between work-related identity discrepancy and counterproductive work behavior was mediated by emotional exhaustion, such that the mediating relationship was strengthened for new leaders with a low level of supervisor incivility and weakened for those with high level of supervisor incivility. We further discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these findings.