Reducing Employees’ Time Theft through Leader’s Developmental Feedback: The Serial Multiple Mediating Effects of Perceived Insider Status and Work Passion

Abstract

Time theft, especially with the shift to remote work during the pandemic, is an increasing challenge for organizations. Existing studies demonstrate that both authoritarian leadership and laissez-faire leadership can exacerbate time theft, putting leaders in a behavioral dilemma of neither being strict nor lenient. Additionally, the pervasive and covert nature of time theft diminishes the effectiveness of subsequent corrective actions. Our study aims to investigate how to prevent time theft by mitigating employees’ inclinations. Based on role theory, our study examines whether supervisor developmental feedback can encourage employees to perform work roles more appropriately. To uncover the complicated internalization process of role expectation, our study incorporates perceived insider status and work passion as serial mediators and considers the boundary effect of leaders’ word–deed consistency. In Study 1, a survey of 402 employees revealed that supervisor developmental feedback can negatively predict employee time theft through employees’ perceived insider status and work passion. Study 2 employs the same sample to further identify three topics of supervisor developmental feedback: skill learning, attitude learning, and social learning. Moreover, serial multiple mediating effects are affirmed across topics. The findings suggest that providing feedback on employees’ learning and growth is an effective approach to prevent time theft.