Marstand, A.F. orcid.org/0000-0002-2727-2714, van Knippenberg, D. orcid.org/0000-0002-0269-8102, Kapoutsis, I. orcid.org/0000-0001-5487-0077 et al. (3 more authors) (2025) An actor‐centric perspective on leader word‐action misalignment: Leader locus of control, shame, and behavioural responses. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 98 (2). e70030. ISSN 0963-1798
Abstract
Leader word-action misalignment has important implications for employees' attitudes and behaviour, but we do not know how it affects leaders themselves. Adopting an actor-centric perspective and integrating insights from research on moral emotions to further develop behavioural integrity theory, we investigate how leaders respond to their own word-action misalignment and how locus of control moderates the relationship between leader word-action misalignment and leader shame, to affect leader avoidance behaviour and task performance. We test the hypothesized relationships in three studies conducted using both experimental and time-separated designs. Across the studies we found that leader word-action misalignment was positively related to leader shame and that locus of control moderated the relationship such that the relationship between leader word-action misalignment and leader shame was stronger for leaders with lower internal locus of control. We also found support for the hypothesized conditional indirect effect of word-action misalignment on leader avoidance and task performance: word-action misalignment was associated with more leader avoidance behaviour and lower leader performance, mediated by leader shame, and more strongly so for leaders with lower internal locus of control. We discuss theoretical and managerial implications of taking an actor-centric perspective in the study of leader word-action misalignment.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2025 The Author(s). Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of The British Psychological Society. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Keywords: | avoidance behaviour; leader word-action misalignment; shame; task performance |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > Management School (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 03 Jun 2025 14:20 |
Last Modified: | 03 Jun 2025 14:20 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Wiley |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1111/joop.70030 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:227330 |