TYPE Original Research PUBLISHED 23 August 2022 DOI 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.945598 OPEN ACCESS EDITED BY Minwir Al-Shammari, University of Bahrain, Bahrain REVIEWED BY Talat Islam, University of the Punjab, Lahore, Pakistan Xuemei Zhan, Jimei University, China *CORRESPONDENCE Mengyun Wu mewu@ujs.edu.cn Muhammad Imran imran@sdas.org SPECIALTY SECTION This article was submitted to Organizational Psychology, a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychology RECEIVED 16 May 2022 ACCEPTED 02 August 2022 PUBLISHED 23 August 2022 CITATION Lu J, Zhang L, Wu M, Imran M, He Q and Zhao Y (2022) Influence of differential leadership behavior on employees’ deviant innovation: Based on dual perspectives of insider and outsider subordinates. Front. Psychol. 13:945598. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.945598 COPYRIGHT © 2022 Lu, Zhang, Wu, Imran, He and Zhao. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. Influence of differential leadership behavior on employees’ deviant innovation: Based on dual perspectives of insider and outsider subordinates Jie Lu 1 , Linrong Zhang 2 , Mengyun Wu 2 *, Muhammad Imran 3 *, Qi He 2 and Yun Zhao 4 1 School of Management, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang, China, 2 School of Finance & Economics, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang, China, 3 Information Research Institute, Qilu University of Technology (Shandong Academy of Sciences), Jinan, China, 4 Department of Economics and Management, Yuncheng University, Yuncheng, China Differential leadership as a localized leadership style gradually developed on the basis of the Pattern of Differential Sequence. It plays a dual role in stimulating “insider subordinates” and “outsider subordinates” through the dynamic transformation of the roles. Using the process of game reasoning, the study identifies the differing principles used by insider subordinates and outsider subordinates in implementing deviant innovative behaviors. The simulation graph presents the perceived benefits of employees performing or not performing deviant innovative behaviors as clues during the reasoning process, and implements deviant innovative behaviors for the high risk- taking trait of insider subordinates and the high internal control personality of outsider subordinates who implement deviant innovation. The theoretical derivation of behavior provides relevant references, and provides counter measures for effectively promoting employees’ deviant innovative behavior in the context of differential leadership. KEYWORDS differential leadership, deviant innovation behavior, insider subordinates, outsider subordinates, Game Theory Introduction Differential leadership refers to the differing leadership behaviors of leaders toward their subordinates under the conditions of personal rule, it is a localized leadership style gradually developed on the basis of the Differential Sequence Pattern which stems from the traditional Chinese social structure, and is a social relationship formed by Frontiers in Psychology 01 frontiersin.org