Dual Effect of Leaders' High Performance Expectation on Employee Performance: Based on the Transactional Theory of Stress

High performance requirements of leaders reflect leaders' desire and expectation for high performance of employees. Based on the transactional theory of stress, proactive work behavior and work withdrawal behavior are two ways for employees to respond to high performance requirements of leaders. The employees' role breadth self-efficacy plays a moderating role in the above process, that is, it determines whether employees take proactive coping style or withdraw coping style, and these two coping styles have a completely opposite impact on employee performance. In this paper, 268 two-point supervisor-employee data were used to conduct path analysis, and the results show that for employees with high role breadth self-efficacy, leaders' high performance expectation has a positive impact on employees' job performance through employees' proactive work behavior; however, for employees with low role breadth self-efficacy, leaders' high performance expectation has a negative impact on employees' job performance through employees' work withdrawal behavior. This paper revealed the dual effect of leaders' high performance expectation from the perspective of contingency, which can provide inspiration for leaders to effectively set high performance requirements.