Threatened by your stars? A multi-method research investigating the negative upward influence of star employees on immediate supervisors

Jincen Xiao, Jing Wei, Bao Cheng and Yingjian Wang

Journal of Business Research, 2025, vol. 190, issue C

Abstract: In recent years, scholars and practitioners have shared an increasing interest in exploring the impact of star employees. However, most focus has been on the association between star employees and non-stars, teams, or organizations, with little work concerning the potential upward influence of star employees on their immediate supervisors. Combining star employee literature and the cognitive appraisal theory of stress, this research develops a mediated moderation model to examine when and how star employees trigger supervisors’ self-interested behaviors. Results from a scenario-based experiment and a time-lagged multi-source field survey (204 star–supervisor dyads) revealed that supervisors are likely to be threatened by star employees when they feel a low level of trust from their managers. Consequently, supervisors tend to engage in self-interested behaviors as a means of self-protection. These findings enrich existing star employee literature by focusing on the star–supervisor dyad and provide insight into related management practices.

Keywords: Star employee; Upward influence; Feeling trusted by manager; Perceived status threat; Self-interested behavior (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0148296325000694
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jbrese:v:190:y:2025:i:c:s0148296325000694

DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2025.115246

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Business Research is currently edited by A. G. Woodside

More articles in Journal of Business Research from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().