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The present study aims to investigate the relationship between institutional influence and performance, mediated through transformational leadership (TL) and moderated by barriers, situational factors, communication and implementation.

Using a structured survey instrument, data were collected from 370 faculty members from 31 higher educational institutions in southern India. After checking the psychometric properties of the instrument, the authors used Hayes’s PROCESS to test the direct hypotheses and three-way interactions.

The results revealed that TL mediated the relationship between institutional influence and performance. Further, the findings supported the three-way interactions between (1) institutional influence, barriers and communication positively affecting TL; and (2) TL, situational factors and implementation affecting the performance of faculty members.

This study underscores the importance of TL for the smooth functioning of higher educational institutions and achieving superior performance, especially in the new normal context after the global pandemic.

This study makes several significant recommendations to administrators in higher educational institutions, in addition to contributing to the vast literature on TL. The study suggests that administrators must invest resources in developing TL skills so that employees reach their fullest potential and contribute to achieving organizational goals. In addition, leaders in organizations need to exercise a transformational style to combat the new normal post-pandemic academic environment.

This study provides new insights into the importance of TL style and institutional influence to enhance performance. To the best of our knowledge, the conceptual model developed and tested the first of its kind in India, significantly contributing to theory and practice.

Unethical pro-organizational behavior (UPB) harms organizations’ long-term development; hence, all sectors of society view it as highly concerning. Optimizing leadership and curbing this behavior is a key managerial challenge. This study takes the relationship between temporal leadership and UPB as its object and examines the direct and indirect paths of temporal leadership’s influence on UPB based on the conservation of resources theory. It further dissects the mediating mechanism of emotional exhaustion and the regulating mechanism of job complexity and constructs the mechanism through which temporal leadership affects UPB.

Data gathered from a sample of 380 employees in 24 provinces and cities were employed for empirical testing using validated factor analysis, hierarchical regression analysis, and a bootstrap method.

The results show that temporal leadership inhibits UPB, while emotional exhaustion partially mediates the relationship between temporal leadership and UPB. That is, temporal leadership inhibits pro-organizational unethical behavior by alleviating emotional exhaustion. In addition, job complexity negatively moderates the relationship between emotional exhaustion and UPB and positively moderates the mediating role of emotional exhaustion between temporal leadership and UPB.

First, although the data used in the study were collected at two different times, they were obtained through self-assessment; therefore, the subjective component and the potential problem of common method bias is evident. Second, the study’s sample size and types of respondents are limited.

1. This study found that temporal leadership can inhibit UPB by reducing employee emotional exhaustion. Therefore, organizations should place greater emphasis on the time factor. 2. In terms of emotional factors, organizations should actively focus on the impact of emotional exhaustion on employees' UPBs. 3. In management practice, managers should adjust their leadership modeling behaviors according to the different degrees of job complexity to replace UPBs with conscious and rational behaviors.

The study reveals how temporal leadership affects UPB and provides a theoretical basis for organizations to mitigate employees' UPB by optimizing their leadership style.

Current research on temporal leadership primarily focuses on the positive predictive effects on individual behaviors and attitudes (Zhang and Ling, 2016), but neglects its effects on negative behaviors. This study’s results complement research on the relationship between temporal leadership and employees' negative behaviors and responds to the call by Zhang and Ling (2015) to conduct research related to temporal leadership in China. On the other hand, current research on employees’ UPB largely focuses on its causative factors, while less research has been conducted on the disincentives for UPB, which to some extent limits systematic and sound research on UPB.