Purpose: According to attribution theory, the purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between paradoxical leadership and employees’ compulsory organizational citizenship behavior, research the mediating and moderating effects of work pressure perception and leadership member exchange differentiation.
Participants and Methods: The data collection work was carried out with 329 employees as the research object, and empirical tests were carried out using confirmatory factor analysis and hierarchical regression analysis methods.
Results: The results of the empirical test show that: paradoxical leadership has a significant positive effect on employees’ compulsory organizational citizenship behavior; work pressure perception plays a mediating role between paradoxical leadership and employee’s compulsory organizational citizenship behavior; leadership member exchange differentiation plays a moderating role between paradoxical leadership and work pressure perception. Paradoxical leadership will lead employees to adopt compulsory organizational citizenship behavior. Moreover, organizations should reduce employees’ perception of work pressure and leadership member exchange differentiation.
Conclusion: The results of the study provide positive suggestions for reducing the compulsory organizational citizenship behavior of employees by focusing on the behavior of paradoxical leadership, thereby promoting the improvement of corporate performance.
Innovations: 1) The research on the influence of paradoxical leadership on compulsory organizational citizenship behavior reveals the “dark side” of the influence of paradoxical leadership on employee behavior. 2) By introducing work pressure perception, this paper reveals the mechanism of action between paradoxical leadership and compulsory organizational citizenship behavior, which provides a new research perspective for understanding the formation mechanism of employees adopting compulsory organizational citizenship behavior. 3) This paper confirms that leadership member exchange differentiation can positively moderate the relationship between paradoxical leadership and work pressure perception.
Keywords: attribution theory, paradoxical leadership, compulsory organizational citizenship behavior, work pressure perception, leadership member exchange differentiation