14171: Understanding Employees Emotional and Behavioral Responses to Colleagues Vigilantism at Work (session 25712)

As a nascent stream of research, workplace vigilantism has received considerable scholastic attention, which mainly focuses on its conceptualization and theorization of why people enact the vigilante role identity. While the existing studies set out from the actor’s perspective, we considered the other half of the story from the receiver’s perspective—those who experience vigilantism at work. We argue that when employees are on the receiving ends of their coworker vigilantism, they exhibit differentiated emotional responses, which in turn lead to distinct behavioral outcomes. Grounded in cognitive-motivational-relational theory, we suggest that experience of coworker vigilantism can elicit two primary emotions in employees: anger and guilt, which subsequently influence their workplace deviant behavior and vigilante behavior. We also incorporates locus of control as a moderating variable. Through a two-wave field survey of 275 employees, we found that: employee experience of coworker vigilantism increases workplace deviant behavior through heightened anger. Conversely, it enhances vigilante behavior through induced guilt. Locus of control moderates these relationships with an internal locus of control weakens the impact of anger on both deviant and vigilante behaviors while strengthening the influence of guilt on vigilante behavior.

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