Being Left in the Dark: Leader Work-Related Secrecy, Psychological Contract Violation, and Employee Discretionary Behavior

IF 9 2区管理学 Q1 BUSINESS

Journal of Organizational Behavior Pub Date : 2026-09-04 Epub Date: 2026-03-22 DOI:10.1002/job.70084

Yating Wang, Ke Michael Mai, Michael L. Slepian

{"title":"Being Left in the Dark: Leader Work-Related Secrecy, Psychological Contract Violation, and Employee Discretionary Behavior","authors":"Yating Wang, Ke Michael Mai, Michael L. Slepian","doi":"10.1002/job.70084","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div>\n \n <p>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: <i>N</i> = 287; Study 2: <i>N</i> = 177) and a multisource multiwave field study (Study 3: <i>N</i> = 364 leader–member dyads) consistently supported our hypothesized model. Implications as well as directions for future research are discussed.</p>\n </div>","PeriodicalId":48450,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Organizational Behavior","volume":"47 7","pages":"1109-1136"},"PeriodicalIF":9.0000,"publicationDate":"2026-09-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Organizational Behavior","FirstCategoryId":"91","ListUrlMain":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/job.70084","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"2026/3/22 0:00:00","PubModel":"Epub","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"BUSINESS","Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

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.

查看原文本刊更多论文

被留在黑暗中：领导工作保密、心理契约违反与员工自由裁量行为

在组织中，领导者通常必须保守与工作有关的秘密，以保护员工或防止信息泄露的负面后果。尽管越来越多的社会心理学研究揭示了保守秘密如何影响一个人的心理状态，但我们对领导工作中的秘密如何在无意中影响员工所知相对较少。本研究将社会心理学文献中关于保密的研究与心理契约理论相结合，考察了员工对领导工作保密的感知如何通过感知到的心理契约违反来减少其领导指导的自由裁量行为（即组织公民行为和建言）。这些影响在信任倾向较低的员工中尤为明显。两个实验（研究1:N = 287；研究2:N = 177）和一个多源多波场研究（研究3:N = 364对领导-成员）的结果一致支持我们的假设模型。讨论了未来研究的意义和方向。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

求助全文

约1分钟内获得全文求助全文

来源期刊

Journal of Organizational Behavior Multiple-

CiteScore

10.50

自引率

5.90%

发文量

期刊介绍： The Journal of Organizational Behavior aims to publish empirical reports and theoretical reviews of research in the field of organizational behavior, wherever in the world that work is conducted. The journal will focus on research and theory in all topics associated with organizational behavior within and across individual, group and organizational levels of analysis, including: -At the individual level: personality, perception, beliefs, attitudes, values, motivation, career behavior, stress, emotions, judgment, and commitment. -At the group level: size, composition, structure, leadership, power, group affect, and politics. -At the organizational level: structure, change, goal-setting, creativity, and human resource management policies and practices. -Across levels: decision-making, performance, job satisfaction, turnover and absenteeism, diversity, careers and career development, equal opportunities, work-life balance, identification, organizational culture and climate, inter-organizational processes, and multi-national and cross-national issues. -Research methodologies in studies of organizational behavior.