Being Left in the Dark: Leader Work‐Related Secrecy, Psychological Contract Violation, and Employee Discretionary Behavior
研究领导工作保密如何通过心理契约违背减少员工对领导的组织公民行为和建言行为，尤其对低信任倾向员工影响更大。
ABSTRACT In organizations, leaders often have to keep work‐related secrets to protect employees or prevent negative consequences of the information becoming known. Although a growing body of social psychological work examines how keeping secrets can influence one's psychological states, we know relatively little about how leader work‐related secrecy can unintentionally affect employees. By integrating research on secrecy in the social psychology literature with psychological contract theory, the current studies examined how employees' perceptions of leader work‐related secrecy may reduce their leader‐directed discretionary behaviors (i.e., organizational citizenship behaviors and voice) through perceived psychological contract violation. These effects were especially pronounced among employees with a low propensity to trust. Results from two experiments (Study 1: N = 287; Study 2: N = 177) and a multisource multiwave field study (Study 3: N = 364 leader–member dyads) consistently supported our hypothesized model. Implications as well as directions for future research are discussed.