Rebel with a cause: The effects of leadership encouragement and psychological safety on professionals' prosocial rulebreaking behavior

A core idea of bureaucratic organizations is that rule-following is a necessary precondition to pursue the public interest. However, rules may sometimes become dysfunctional, burdensome, and even interfere with public value delivery. In those situations, professionals sometimes engage in prosocial rule-breaking (PSRB), rather than rule-following, with the aim to deliver meaningful public services. This article examines leadership encouragement and psychological safety as antecedents of PSRB behavior. Data from two waves of a multi-source dataset consisting of professionals' self-reported PSRB behavior and psychological safety (n = 837 and 965 respondents) and their supervisor-reported encouragement for PSRB behavior (n = 58 and 64 respondents) is used. Findings point to a positive relationship between psychological safety and PSRB. Moreover, the study partly supports the hypothesis that leadership encouragement is associated with higher levels of PSRB, but only under conditions of high psychological safety.