Abstract
The current research delves into the liaison between employees’ perceptions of organizational politics and deviant behaviour at the workplace. Precisely, it proposes that perceived politics is positively related to deviant work behavior, and utilizing the Job Demands-Resources perspective, it establishes that emotional exhaustion intervenes this relationship as a mediator. Crucially, the study puts forth that servant leadership moderates this relationship such that it mitigates the positive impact of employees’ perceived politics on their levels of emotional exhaustion and subsequent deviant behavior. Results of SEM and PROCESS on survey data gathered from IT organizations reveal that perceived politics is positively related to deviant behavior, emotional exhaustion partially mediates this relationship, and servant leadership negatively moderates the perceived politics-emotional exhaustion-deviant behavior relationship. These findings hold key implications for theory and practice. Lastly, the study proffers limitations and directions for future research.