Paradoxical leadership, experienced tensions, and counterproductive behavior: moderation by consistency and gender

Abstract

Complementing theory and evidence for the positive effects of paradoxical leadership, we argue that paradoxical leadership can also result in tensions from the awareness it raises of conflicting paradoxical demands and the expectation that subordinates strive to maximize on these demands even when they are conflicting. Such tensions may result in counterproductive behavior. This gives rise to the question of how these negative effects of paradoxical leadership may be attenuated. Addressing this issue, we argue that higher consistency of paradoxical leadership reduces uncertainty and thus attenuates experienced tensions and counterproductive behavior following from these tensions, and more so for male subordinates who, on average, have less experience dealing with work-related conflicting demands than female subordinates. We found support for this moderated mediation model in a repeated-measures survey (N=107 individuals; N=1027 weekly observations). We discuss implications of our findings for theory and practice.