Organization-Set High-Performance Goals and Employee Expediency Syndrome: An Underlying Mechanism of Supervisor Expediency and Illegitimate Tasks

Hina Fayyaz and Ajmal Waheed

SAGE Open, 2023, vol. 13, issue 2, 21582440231164564

Abstract: Recent research in organizational behavior reveals that even though expediency is detrimental to an organization, it remains an overlooked phenomenon. Expediency is covert unethical behavior and is challenging to identify because it is mostly confused with proficiency. Limited empirical research can be traced in the literature investigating when and why employee exhibits expediency. This research aims to identify and examine contextual factors in organizations that are the probable cause of employee expediency. Organization-set high-performance goals are examined as a predictor of expediency. Furthermore, supervisor expediency and illegitimate tasks are investigated as mediators to refine the causal mechanism between organization-set high-performance goals and employee expediency. Drawing on the transactional model of stress and coping, it is theorized that organization-set high-performance goals, supervisor expediency, and illegitimate tasks are contextual workplace stressors, and employees exhibit expediency to cope with them. Data is collected from private health sector employees with a sample size of 591. It is a time lag- study with four-wave data collection and two sources, that is, supervisors and subordinates. The results provide empirical support to the hypotheses formulated in the present study. The findings demonstrate that organization-set high-performance goals positively and significantly affect employee and supervisor expediency. Additionally, results confirm the mediation effect of supervisor expediency and illegitimate tasks. Theoretical and practical implications and future research directions are also discussed.

Keywords: organization-set high-performance goals; supervisor expediency; illegitimate tasks; and employee expediency (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/21582440231164564 (text/html)

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:sae:sagope:v:13:y:2023:i:2:p:21582440231164564

DOI: 10.1177/21582440231164564

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in SAGE Open
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().