Abstract: Illegitimate tasks are assigned work tasks that violate the boundary of what can be appropriately expected by an employee. It comprises unreasonable and unnecessary tasks. The former refers to tasks that are perceived out of scope of employee’s professional work role. The latter refers to tasks that employees don’t need to do at all, as it causes unnecessary effort, wastes time, and makes the organization inefficient. Previous studies found that illegitimate tasks negatively impact on organizations and employees. However, we believe that added insight can be provided by investigating newcomers’ work engagement as an additional outcome. Drawing on an overarching framework of Cognitive Appraisal Theory of Emotion, this study developed a model of illegitimate tasks that explicates the affective mechanisms through which illegitimate tasks associated with negative work engagement. We hypothesized that the experience of illegitimate task predicts newcomers’ high unpleasant feeling, as illegitimate tasks threaten newcomers’ role identity and indicate the disrespect signal of newcomers’ professional role as well as hinder the achievement of employee goals. Moreover, the unpleasant feeling in turn predicts poor work engagement, because when experiencing negative emotion, newcomers tend to promote avoidance tendency or protective strategies, such as reducing physical, cognitive and emotional investment at work. In addition, we further predicted that growth theories of work would moderate the relationship between illegitimate task and unpleasant feeling, because newcomers who have high growth theories tend to consider illegitimate task as challenge and opportunities for learning, which will reduce the unpleasant feeling. Seventy-one participants filled out between-level survey and subsequently completed daily dairy questionnaires for one week （5 work days). Multilevel modeling was used to test primary hypotheses. Result indicate that （1) illegitimate task increases unpleasant feeling in new employees. （2) unpleasant feeling mediates the effects of illegitimate task on newcomers’ work engagement. （3) growth theories of work moderates the positive relationship between illegitimate tasks and unpleasant feeling. Specifically, high growth theories of work will decrease the unpleasant feeling caused by illegitimate tasks. This study has several theoretical implications. First, we focus on newcomer and reveals that suffering illegitimate tasks will have a negative impact on newcomers’ work engagement, which further indicates employees' self-protection strategy on coping illegitimate tasks. What’s more, the discussion of unpleasant feeling, a kind of compound emotion, further enrich the affective mechanisms of illegitimate tasks research. In addition, employees’ implicit beliefs such as growth theories of work can buffer unpleasant feelings caused by non-compliant tasks, and this conclusion further expands the boundary mechanism between illegitimate tasks and employees’ affect. The conclusion of this research also provides inspiration for how organizational managers interfere with the negative impact of illegitimate tasks on newcomers. Finally, this research points out some limitations and offer some suggestions for further research, for example, would illegitimate tasks induce more employee voice behavior? could conscientiousness buffer the negative impact of illegitimate tasks on work outcomes?

Key words: illegitimate tasks, unpleasant feeling, newcomers’ work engagement, growth theories of work

摘要： 本研究基于情绪的认知评价理论，探讨了不合规任务对新员工工作投入的动态影响机制。通过收集分析71名新员工连续5个工作日的追踪数据发现，不合规任务会诱发新员工的不愉快情绪，进而影响其工作投入，工作成长观能够有效缓冲这一负面影响。以上结论拓宽了不合规任务的影响后果，并为如何干预不合规任务给新员工带来的消极影响提供了启示。

关键词: 不合规任务, 不愉快情绪, 新员工工作投入, 工作成长观