Counterproductive Work Behaviors toward Organization and Leader-Member Exchange: The Mediating Roles of Emotional Exhaustion and Work Engagement

In this article, we develop and empirically test a model of antecedents of organizational counterproductive work behavior (CWB-O) specifying work engagement and emotional exhaustion as mediators of the relationship between leader–member exchange (LMX) and CWB-O. Our results show (a) that the relationship between LMX and organizational CWB-O is partially mediated by work engagement and (b) that the relationship between work engagement and CWB-O is partially mediated by emotional exhaustion. We discuss our findings and their implications for research and practice.