PurposeThis study aims to explore the impact of ethical leadership on employee creative deviance, with job autonomy as a mediator and creative self-efficacy as a moderator between job autonomy and creative deviance.Design/methodology/approachA survey was developed based on construct measures from the literature. A total of 316 responses were received from employees of information and communication technology companies located in China's Pearl River Delta.FindingsBoth ethical leadership and job autonomy have a positive impact on employee creative deviance; job autonomy plays a mediating role between ethical leadership and creative deviance; creative self-efficacy does not have a significant moderating effect on the job autonomy-creative deviance relationship.Research limitations/implicationsFuture studies could explore the potential moderating role of both job autonomy and creative-self efficacy in the link between ethical leadership and creative deviance.Practical implicationsThis study recommends that organizations should adopt and promote an ethical leadership approach to manage creative deviance at work. Organizations could explore alternative methods of task completion to support the job autonomy for the employees to mitigate the dilemmas associated with creative deviance.Originality/valueThis is one of few studies that examine the impact of ethical leadership on employee's creative deviance, despite the fact that the influence of ethical leadership on the followers has been extensively examined.

Early studies on women migrant workers in China focused largely on the dagongmei, or single young women, and the general poverty of their employment conditions. Recent trends, however, indicate that the number of married women migrant workers, or dagongsao, is increasing. But the paid work experiences of married women migrant workers are largely under‐researched. In order to address this gap, we analyse data from the 2014 Guangdong Migrant Workers Survey (GMWS 2014) and focus on workers employed in the formal sector. In comparing the employment conditions of single and married women migrant workers, the findings reveal that the working conditions of married women migrant workers are worse, particularly with respect to pay, social security benefits and the workplace environment. This research makes a significant contribution to the literature on migrant workers in China, and offers a different perspective to the traditional stereotype of women migrant workers.

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Employee voice in China remains an under-researched topic from an industrial relations perspective. We investigated the relationship between family dependents (children and elderly) and migrant worker silence, with town-fellow organizations as a moderator, based on the data of the 2014 Guangdong Migrant Workers Survey. The findings reveal that migrant workers with dependent children are more likely to keep silent when their labour rights and interests are violated at the workplace, while family responsibilities for dependent elderly family members do not have significant impacts on migrant workers’ silence. In addition, town-fellow organizations weaken the association between family responsibilities for elderly dependents and silence. Our study contributes to the existing literature on employee voice and provides evidence on the role of town-fellow organizations in China as an informal, emerging institutional actor that regulates labour relations through their involvement in dispute resolution.