Sociologists and organizational scholars have focused on alleviating the negative consequences of destructive deviance—norm violations that benefit the self but harm organizations and societies — yet little attention has been paid to potential negative consequences of constructive deviance—violations of informal and formal norms intended to benefit organizations and societies. Although constructive deviance does indeed bring about positive organizational outcomes, it also may carry damaging unintended consequences. Drawing upon Merton’s classic theory of anomie (i.e., normlessness) and its modern extension that examines organizational deviance from the social control perspective, we theorize that managerial constructive deviance promotes perceived acceptability of norm violations, thereby causing employees to engage in destructive deviance for personal gain at the expense of the organization. To mitigate these unintended consequences, we hypothesize that perceived organizational norm tightness and organizational identification reduce the likelihood that managerial constructive deviance will lead to employee destructive deviance. Results from a time-lagged field study provide robust evidence in support of our hypotheses. By deepening our understanding of how managerial constructive deviance can inadvertently promote employee destructive deviance, this research bears important implications for theory, research, and practice
