With the development of the knowledge economy age, many companies are facing the problem of “innovator dilemma”. Constructive deviance can break untimely organizational rules and procedures so that it can promote organizational change and innovation, but it is risky for employees themselves and requires strong motivation. Employees with different regulatory focuses have different motives due to their different pursuit of desired states. Employees with a high promotion focus tend to meet growth and development needs in a proactive work style, and those with a high prevention focus tend to meet security needs in a conservative and evasive manner. This paper believes that employees with different regulatory focuses have different performance in constructive deviance.

This paper takes the leaders and employees of manufacturing companies and high-tech companies in Shanxi, Hunan, Guangdong and other regions as the main survey subjects. 83 sets of effective leader questionnaires and 369 employee questionnaires are obtained, and the matching ratio is 1:4.4. The data is statistically analyzed using Mplus7.0, Spss20.0, and R software. It finds that: The promotion focus has a positive effect on employees’ constructive deviance, while the prevention focus has a negative effect. This paper also finds that empowering leadership can strengthen the positive impact of the promotion focus on employees’ constructive deviance because it provides a relaxed and motivating work environment, and it can also reinforce the influence by enhancing employees’ felt obligation.

The main innovation points are as follows: Firstly, there are few previous studies on the influence mechanism of regulatory focuses on employees’ constructive deviance. This paper clarifies the differential impacts of different modes of regulatory focuses on employees’ constructive deviance through empirical analysis. Secondly, the boundary conditions between regulatory focuses and employees’ constructive deviance are explored by introducing the dual moderating mechanism of empowering leadership and employees’ felt obligation. This study enriches the formation mechanism of employees’ constructive deviance by revealing the mediating mechanism of employees’ felt obligation on the moderating effect of empowering leadership. Finally, unlike the social exchange theory and the self-determination theory in previous studies of employees’ constructive deviance, this paper interprets the stimulating mechanism of employees’ constructive deviance from a new perspective based on the model of proactive motivation, and expands the theoretical perspective of employees’ constructive deviance.

The practical implications are as follows: Firstly, enterprises should allocate employees with different regulatory focuses according to the work characteristics in order to achieve the person-position matching. Secondly, leaders should effectively empower employees according to their characteristics to avoid improper authorization. For employees with a higher promotion focus, leaders should provide them more opportunities to participate in decision-making, and encourage them to take challenging task from time to time to meet their motivation needs of improving capabilities. Finally, leaders should enhance employees’ sense of responsibility to the organization and encourage them to make constructive deviance for the interests of the organization by effectively empowering subordinates. By empowering behavior, leaders make employees realize that the task they are engaged in can affect other members and even the entire organization, motivate them to take on more responsibilities, and enhance the motivation of taking on constructive deviance.