When and How Leaders Withdraw Team Extra-Role Investment: The Role of Leaders’ Psychological Contract Breach

Abstract

This study investigates how team behavior shapes leaders’ supportive actions over time. Drawing on social exchange theory, we propose that leaders who initially invest extra-role efforts in their teams develop perceptions of reciprocal obligation on the part of the team. When teams fail to reciprocate through low levels of team organizational citizenship behavior toward the leader, leaders perceive a psychological contract breach by the team, particularly when their own prior extra-role investment has been high. These breach perceptions subsequently reduce leaders’ future extra-role investment. We test our model through three studies, including two scenario-based experiments and a multi-source, three-wave field study. Results consistently support our hypotheses, revealing that low team organizational citizenship behavior toward leaders in response to leaders’ extra-role investment predicts leaders’ psychological contract breach perceptions, and that this breach negatively predicts subsequent leader extra-role investment. These findings highlight the active role of teams in shaping leadership outcomes and offer a co-constructed perspective that demonstrates how leaders adjust their efforts in response to perceived team behavior.