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Abstract The present study examines the contrasting effects of leader negative feedback on employee behaviour within the workplace, focusing specifically on how such feedback affects employees' proactive and cheating behaviour. Drawing upon feedback intervention theory, we investigate the mediating effects of task reflexivity and state anxiety, along with the moderating effects of employee goal orientation. In a daily diary study involving 89 employees that included 1259 daily observations, we find that leader negative feedback positively influences employees' proactive work behaviour through enhancing their task reflexivity, particularly for those with a high learning goal orientation. However, we find that it also increases employees' cheating behaviour by enhancing their state anxiety, especially among those with a high avoidant performance goal orientation. A follow‐up critical incident study testing our model in the context of single episodes of leader negative feedback largely replicated these results. Taken together, these findings illuminate the underlying mechanisms through which leader negative feedback can motivate divergent employee work‐related behaviours as well as the key role of employees' goal orientation in shaping their responses to leader negative feedback.
Dong et al. (Mon,) studied this question.