Coworker Instigated Bootlegging: The Roles of Leadership and Goal Orientation

With a growing recognition that bootlegging happens without managers’ awareness, we focus on examining the effects of coworkers’ behaviors on employee bootlegging. Drawing on social information processing framework and social comparison theory, we propose our theoretical model that coworker proactive behavior will relate to employee bootlegging through instigated learning goal orientation (LGO) and performance-avoid goal orientation (PAGO), we further propose that employees’ perception of transformational leadership as a boundary condition for such an association. We tested our hypotheses in a three-wave time-lagged study. The results showed that coworker proactive behavior relates positively to employee bootlegging via LGO and PAGO. The effect of PAGO on bootlegging was stronger when transformational leadership was high rather than low. The indirect effect of coworker proactive behavior on bootlegging was also stronger when transformational leadership was high rather than low. While these effects of LGO was insignificant. These findings of this study offer a novel perspective on the antecedents of bootlegging and provide evidence to the important effects of coworkers’ behaviors on employee bootlegging.