How does exploitative leadership impact employees’ innovative performance? The roles of harmonious innovation passion and trait mindfulness

Purpose This paper aims to investigate the influence of exploitative leadership on employees’ innovative performance. Based on self-determination theory (SDT), this study built a moderated mediation model to reveal the underlying mechanism through which exploitative leadership impacts employees’ innovative performance and its boundary conditions. Design/methodology/approach In total 223 paired leader-follower responses were collected from a high-tech enterprise in China, using a multi-wave and multi-source method. Then, hierarchical multiple regression and bootstrap sampling were used to test the proposed theoretical model and hypotheses. Findings The findings verified the detrimental effect of exploitative leadership on employees’ innovative performance. Specifically, exploitative leadership was found to damage employees’ harmonious innovation passion, which, in turn, led to a lower level of innovative performance. And employees’ harmonious innovation passion acted as a mediator in this relationship. Furthermore, employees’ trait mindfulness not only diminished the negative effect of exploitative leadership on harmonious innovation passion but also buffered the indirect effect of exploitative leadership on employees’ innovative performance via harmonious innovation passion. Originality/value First, this study enriches exploitative leadership literature by exploring its impact on employees’ innovative performance. Second, drawing upon SDT, this study reveals the potential mechanism through which exploitative leadership may negatively affect employees’ innovative performance via harmonious innovation passion. Third, this study underscores the crucial role of employees’ trait mindfulness in the process of exploitative leadership influencing employees’ innovative performance. Overall, this study provides some valuable implications for the organizations to promote employees’ innovative performance.