Self-serving leadership is a typical example of destructive leadership that has negative effects on its subordinates and organization. According to social identity theory, we propose a theoretical model that self-serving leadership induces employee interpersonal deviance and organizational deviance through organization identification, and we explore the moderating role of moral identity in this relationship. Based on survey data collected from 377 questionnaires by using a three-wave time lagged design, structural equation modeling results showed that (1) there was a significant positive correlation between self-serving leadership and employees’ deviant behavior, (2) organizational identification partially mediates the relationship between self-serving leadership and employees’ deviant behavior, and (3) employees’ moral identity negatively moderates the relationship between self-serving leadership and employees’ organizational identification. The findings further extend the research on the influence of self-serving leadership on employee workplace deviance. They also reveal the mechanisms and boundary conditions of the effect of self-serving leadership on employee workplace deviance.

Employee innovative behavior is significant in maintaining an organization's sustainable development. This study explored the impact of team psychological safety and workplace anxiety on the association between self-serving leadership and employee innovation behavior by synthesizing social information processing theory, conservation of resources theory, and ego depletion theory. We conducted a hierarchical linear model analysis using three-wave paired data collected from 86 leaders and 392 employees. The research results showed that self-serving leadership is negatively correlated with employee innovation behavior. Meanwhile, team psychological safety and workplace anxiety mediated this relationship. In addition, team psychological safety mitigates the impact of workplace anxiety on employee innovation behavior and the indirect impact of self-serving leadership on employee innovation behavior via workplace anxiety. These findings have a number of theoretical and practical implications in the domains of self-serving leadership and employee innovation behavior.