关键词: 建设性越轨, 主管绩效评价, 过犹不及效应

Abstract: The research on constructive deviance has attracted much attention these years. Constructive deviance refers to the voluntary behavior that violates significant norms with the aim of improving the well-being of an organization, its members or both. The findings from the extant literature point that role breath self-efficacy, felt responsibility for constructive change, inclusive leadership, humble leadership, etc., can lead to employees’ constructive deviance. Unlike the research on its antecedents, outcomes of constructive deviance were rarely discussed, which was not helpful for unveiling its nature. Constructive deviance has the potential to produce a lot of positive outcomes, such as enhanced efficiency and constructive organizational change. However, constructive deviance may also lead to negative consequences; rules sometimes exist for valid reasons that employees do not understand, and breaking those rules may cause broader problems despite good intentions. Despite these insightful arguments, there was little empirical research investigating the outcomes of constructive deviance. In order to bridge the gap, based on the integration of social exchange theory and similarity attraction theory, the present study explored the inverted U-shaped relationship between employees’ constructive deviance and supervisory performance ratings. We collected data using the paired questionnaires by two-wave survey and got data from 62 supervisors and 290 subordinates to test the hypotheses. The results of statistical analysis show that: (1) Employees’ constructive deviance has a direct, inverted U-shaped impact on supervisory performance ratings. It means that a moderate level of constructive deviance may serve as a facilitating factor but become an inhibiting factor if it exceeds a certain level. (2) Leader perceived leader-member exchange quality fully mediates the U-shaped relationship between employees’ constructive deviance and supervisory performance ratings. Specifically, employees’ constructive deviance firstly has a direct, inverted U-shaped impact on leader perceived leader-member exchange quality, and then positively influences supervisory performance ratings accordingly. (3) Leader’s felt responsibility for constructive change plays a moderating role in the inverted U-shaped relationship between employees’ constructive deviance and leader perceived leader-member exchange quality, such that turning-point in their relationship occurs in the higher level of employees’ constructive deviance for leaders with high level of felt responsibility for constructive change. The current study provides several theoretical contributions. First, the current study investigates the inverted U-shaped relationship between employees’ constructive deviance and supervisory performance ratings based on too-much-of-a-good-thing effect, which not only enriches the research on the outcomes of constructive deviance, but also extends the application fields of too-much-of-a-good-thing effect. Second, based on social exchange theory, the current study puts leader perceived leader-member exchange quality into research model to explore the mechanism between employees’ constructive deviance and supervisory performance ratings, which fills the theoretical gap between them. Third, based on similarity attraction theory, the current study tests the moderation effect of leader’s felt responsibility for constructive change on the relationship between employees’ constructive deviance and leader perceived leader-member exchange quality, which not only bridges the gap in the boundary condition between them, but also extends the application fields of similarity attraction theory. Overall, this study unveils that constructive deviance is a “double-edged sword”, as well as provides useful references for enterprise innovation management practice.

Key words: Constructive deviance, supervisory performance ratings, too-much-of-a-good-thing effect