Abstract: In the post-COVID-19 era, the business environment is undergoing adjustment, transformation and reshaping, and the pressure on enterprises to survive is multiplying. The stretch goal is an adaptive mechanism for an organization to respond to future threats in advance. By imposing difficult goals to stimulate the organization to carry out self-transformation, it can enable employees to break the fixed thinking, enhance exploratory learning and innovation to stimulate performance improvement. Therefore, it is the only choice for an organization to reverse the trend. However, the stretch goal has two characteristics: extremely difficult and extremely novel, which may cause employees to achieve this difficult goal at the cost of the loss of morality, thus triggering the dark effect of the stretch goal, which makes curve overtaking turn into curve rollover. Therefore, based on the cognitive evaluation theory of emotion, this study constructs a theoretical model of workplace anxiety as a mediator variable, and introduces employees' failure-based learning behaviors and perceived organizational support as dual compensation means.
The purpose of this study is to explore the internal reasons and intervention mechanisms of employees' unethical behavior caused by organizational stretch goals. Based on this, a two-stage moderating mediated model is constructed. This study conducted field research in 8 enterprises in Shanghai, and collected data in three stages, each with a one-month interval. Finally, 390 valid samples were obtained. Regression analysis, Bootstrap and Johnson Neyman method were used for hypothesis testing.
The resultsof the study are as follow: (1) Workplace anxiety plays a mediating role between organizational stretch goals and unethical behaviors; (2) Employees' failure-based learning behaviors in the first stage can urge employees to change their intrinsic motivation to face failure squarely, and gain more valuable unique experience and methods from failure attribution; (3) Under the moderating of perceived organizational support in the second stage, employees can obtain psychological empowerment at the emotional level and resource supply at the tool level to improve their business capabilities; (4) On the whole, under the joint effect of employees' failure-based learning behaviors and perceived organizational support, organizational stretch goals have the least negative impact on employees' unethical behaviors by increasing workplace anxiety.
The theoretical value of this study lies in the construction of a complete dual compensation framework to curb employees' unethical behaviors caused by organizational stretch goals. Its practical implication is that although the stretch goal is an important choice for enterprises to deal with uncertain challenges, its dark side cannot be ignored. By means of failure-based learning behaviors and perceived organizational support at different levels, enterprises can turn crisis into an opportunity to realize curve overtaking. That is, at the employee level, they should be guided to strengthen their learning from failure, turn the failure experience into a reference for subsequent work, and at the organizational level, the organization should be required to provide emotional support to strengthen employees' psychological empowerment and instrumental support to strengthen the resource supply of employees.

Key words: Stretch Goals, Workplace Anxiety, Unethical Behavior, Failure-based Learning Behaviors, Perceived Organizational Support

摘要： 基于情绪认知评价理论,引入员工失败学习和组织创新支持感的双重补偿手段,构建了一个延展性目标引发不道德行为的两阶段被调节中介模型。通过对8家企业的390个样本分析后表明,组织延展性目标的极端困难和极端新颖会加重员工职场焦虑进而引发不道德行为,而员工失败学习和组织创新支持感能够缓解员工的威胁感知并使其获得情感支持和资源补偿,从而弱化延展性目标对员工不道德行为的负面效应,抑制不道德行为的蔓延。本研究揭示了延展性目标的黑暗面并为企业将其化危机为契机提供了理论和实践启示。

关键词: 延展性目标, 职场焦虑, 不道德行为, 员工失败学习, 组织创新支持感