The double-edged sword effects of differential leadership on deviant behavior

Since the beginning of 2020, coronavirus disease has broken out globally, large-scale work and production have stopped, causing employees to experience emotional exhaustion, and home offices have greatly exacerbated employees’ deviant behavior. Leadership practices can actively influence employees’ workplace behaviors and can prevent employees’ passiveness and drain on their mental health. Based on the perspective of attribution theory, this article explores the influence of differential leadership on emotional exhaustion and deviant behavior in internal/external control employees. This survey’s subjects were employees working in Tianjin, Beijing, Shanghai. Using the Questionnaire Star, the online platform of the Marketing Research Office of Peking University, and “snowball” methods, 357 questionnaires were collected. This study found that care and communication have no significant effect on deviance. Promotion & rewards significantly reduced interpersonal deviance but had no significant effect on organizational deviance. Tolerance & trust significantly improved interpersonal deviance but had no significant effect on organizational deviance. Employees with a high locus of control (internal control) could more easily control their emotions and reduce interpersonal deviance than employees with a low locus of control (external control) but this had no moderating effect on organizational deviance. The research shows that leaders should regularly care for and encourage each employee within their department, guide employees to recognize the organizational environment, establish an “insider” team, improve work efficiency, and incentivize “outsider” efforts. Subsequent studies can observe and capture employees’ emotions and subconscious behaviors through interviews and experiments to ensure the accuracy of the data. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12144-022-03845-x.