Coaching Leadership and Employees’ Deviant Innovation Behavior: Mediation and Chain Mediation of Interactional Justice and Organizational Identification

PURPOSE: Previous studies are based on social exchange theory to explore the influence of leadership style on employees’ deviant innovation behavior. However, deviant innovation is risky, not supported by the organization, and is expected to benefit the long-term development of the organization. The key to the problem lies in how to guide employees to think and solve problems from the perspective of the organization, instead of just relying on material or spiritual exchange and return. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to analyze the relationship between coaching leadership, interactional justice, organizational identification and employees’ deviant innovation from the perspective of changing cognition. METHODS: This work surveyed employees in 26 Chinese enterprises in more than 10 regions. Questionnaires were distributed to 450 employees, the first round of survey mainly investigated demographic information of employees and coaching leadership style of supervisors, and the second round of survey mainly investigated employees’ organizational identification, interactional justice, and deviant innovation behavior. By tracking and matching, 340 valid questionnaires were finally obtained. Spss 22.0 was used to describe all the study variables; Mplus 7.0 is used to carry out a confirmatory factor analysis and a multi-path regression model. RESULTS: According to self-categorization theory, the results demonstrated that coaching leadership can directly or indirectly promote employees’ deviant innovation behavior through the dual-path intermediary and chain intermediary of interactional fairness and organizational identification. CONCLUSION: Under the open situation created by coaching leadership, coaching leaders will interact and communicate sincerely with employees, and employees’ cognition will change. The original “I” of employees will be transformed into “big self” with organizational membership, which will guide employees to show behaviors beneficial to the organization. Therefore, interactional justice and organizational identification can play a key role of the influence of coaching leadership on employees’ deviant innovation behavior.