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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the mediating effect of deontic justice in the relationship between unethical leader behavior and employee performance, and whether leader–member exchange (LMX) moderates the effect. Design/methodology/approach A two-time-point questionnaire survey was used to collect data from 225 employees of nine firms in China at two points in time separated by approximately three weeks. Findings The hypothesized moderated mediation model used in this study was supported. Deontic justice mediates the negative relationship between unethical leader behavior and employee performance, and higher LMX tends to strengthen this indirect relationship. Originality/value Previous scholars mainly focused on the cognitive and conscious thought process to explain employees’ reactions to unethical leader behavior, and largely ignored the research on the nonconscious thought process. Drawing on deontic justice theory, this study extends the previous research on the nonconscious system of moral decision-making processing by introducing employee deontic justice as a mediator in the relationship between unethical leader behavior and employee performance and further exploring LMX as a boundary condition of this indirect relationship.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the potential moderating role of team membership change in the relationship between joint decision making and team creativity and to determine whether team psychological safety mediates the moderating effect. Design/methodology/approach Survey data from multiple sources on 78 teams were collected in the People’s Republic of China. Confirmatory factor analysis and hierarchical regression analysis were adopted to analyze the data. Findings The hypothesized mediated moderation model is supported. The results indicate that joint decision making is more positively related to team creativity under lower levels of team membership change and team psychological safety is a significant intermediate mechanism between the moderating effect and team creativity. Research limitations/implications The cross-sectional design of this study is insufficient to support the causal inferences in the theoretical model; therefore, further longitudinal or laboratory research is required. In addition, other possible boundary conditions and underlying mechanisms have yet to be tested. Originality/value The present paper complements the extant studies, which mainly focus on the implication of leadership empowerment behaviors for individual outcomes, by examining the impact of joint decision making on team creativity and, further, reveals when and how joint decision making is more likely to foster team creativity, which extends the literature on leadership and team creativity.

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This study explores how the variability of the work environment shapes the impact of educational level diversity on team creativity. By adopting an integrative framework—“status characteristics–information elaboration” model as a theoretical lens, we propose and examine the moderating roles of task and personnel variability in educational level diversity–team creativity relationship. Utilizing multiple survey data collected from 90 knowledge work teams, the empirical results indicate that educational level diversity is more conducive to team creativity when teams are confronted with more variable tasks and when teams experience less frequent personnel changes. The findings of this study provide valuable insight on the conditions under which team diversity’s information potential is more likely to realize and contribute to a more context-based understanding of the relationship between diversity and creativity.