Paradoxical leadership is a leadership style that combines both employees’ individual needs and organizational requirements. The existing literature shows that paradoxical leadership has a positive influence on variables at the individual level, team level and organizational level. It is necessary to further explore the negative impact of paradoxical leadership on the individual level (such as employees’ unethical pro-supervisor behavior), the path of influence and situational conditions. Based on social exchange theory, this paper studied the influence of paradoxical leadership on employees’ unethical pro-supervisor behavior, and clarified the mediating role of supervisor–subordinate Guanxi and the moderating effect of follower mindfulness. We conducted an empirical analysis on the data of 356 employees collected in two phases, and found that paradoxical leadership exerts a significant positive effect on unethical pro-supervisor behavior; supervisor–subordinate Guanxi has a partial mediating effect on the relationship between paradoxical leadership and unethical pro-supervisor behavior; and follower mindfulness moderates the influence of paradoxical leadership on supervisor–subordinate Guanxi, and moderates the intermediation of supervisor–subordinate Guanxi on the main effect. This paper enriches the existing research on the mechanism of influence of paradoxical leadership and deepens our understanding of boundary conditions in relation to the role of paradoxical leadership.

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