The Effect Of Differential Leadership On Employees’ Time Banditry Behavior

With the development of the Internet economy and the acceleration of the transformation process of enterprise platform,the working mode of employees has undergone tremendous changes,such as remote assistance,home office and other modes are gradually popular among enterprises and employees.While technology brings more convenience,the boundary between work and non-work is becoming more and more blurred,and the workplace time-banditry behavior represented by "loafing" in organizations is also increasing,which depletes a lot of precious time resources of organizations and virtually increases the operating costs of the enterprise.Therefore,it is of great practical importance for organizational management to explore how to curb the occurrence of time banditry behaviors at the source and promote the maximization of employees’ time value.As a contextual event in an organization,leadership style has a profound impact on employees’ cognitive evaluation and behavioral performance.However,few studies have focused on the influence of leadership style on time banditry behavior,and the research over the influence of local leadership styles on employees’ negative work behavior is still insufficient.Therefore,this study takes corporate employees as the research object and constructs a theoretical model based on social exchange theory,with differential leadership as the independent variable,employee time banditry behavior as the dependent variable,psychological empowerment as the mediating variable,and growth need strength as the moderating variable,aiming to explore the influence mechanism of differential leadership on employees’ time banditry behavior.Through the empirical analysis of semi-structured interviews with 20 corporate employees and 356 multi-temporal questionnaires,the following conclusions were finally drawn:(1)The employee-perceived differential leadership negatively predicts the time banditry behavior of employees,which is specifically manifested as:differential leadership’s care and communication,promotion and rewards are negatively predicted employees’ time banditry behavior;(2)The employee-perceived differential leadership positively predicts employee’s psychological empowerment,which is specifically manifested as: differential leadership’s care and communication,promotion and rewards are positively predicted perceived employee’s psychological empowerment;(3)Psychological empowerment negatively predicted employees’ time banditry behavior;(4)Psychological empowerment has a mediating role in the relationship between employee-perceived differential leadership and time banditry behavior,which is manifested as follows: psychological empowerment mediated the relationship between care and communication,promotion and rewards of differential leadership and time banditry behavior;(5)Growth need strength moderates the relationship between employee-perceived differential leadership and psychological empowerment,the moderating effect of growth need strength between the care and communication,promotion and rewards of differential leadership and psychological empowerment was significant;(6)Growth need strength positively moderates the mediating effect of psychological empowerment between care,communication and promotion of differential leadership and time banditry behavior.The findings of this article extend the study of antecedent variables of time banditry behavior to a certain extent,and enrich the study of the influence mechanism and boundary conditions of differential leadership on employees’ time banditry behavior.Besides,it also provide certain management insights for organization mangers.