Previous studies have established the relationship between ethical leadership and a variety of positive follower outcomes. They have investigated a number of psychological mechanisms that mediate these relationships. In terms of mediators, follower organizational identification has been found to mediate the relationship between ethical leadership and follower job performance. In this research, we incorporate a second distinct and theoretically important type of social identification process, relational identification with the leader, along with organizational identification, and examine their mediating effects on follower performance and voice outcomes. Further, we bring the implicit theory of morality to the behavioral ethics literature and examine follower morality beliefs as a moderator. Using a Romanian sample of 302 followers under the supervision of 27 leaders, we found that ethical leadership has an indirect effect on follower job performance and voice (through the mediating mechanisms of both organizational and relational identifications) and that these relationships are stronger for followers who held the implicit theory that a person's moral character is fixed. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.Keywords: Ethical leadership; relational identification; organizational identification; voice; implicit theory of morality (Mayer et al., 2012;Stouten et al., 2010). Recently, more attention has been paid to understanding the mediating mechanisms that underlie these relationships. The ethical leadership construct was initially proposed to rely on social learning processes to produce its effects (Brown et al., 2005). More recently, researchers have emphasized the prominent role of social identification processes by focusing on organizational identification as a mediator . We propose a model that includes two types of social identification mechanisms as mediators and that proposes a moderator of these effects that is new to the behavioral ethics literature, implicit morality beliefs.Identification processes have previously been proposed as a potential mediating mechanism (e.g., Brown & Mitchell, 2010) in the ethical leadership/outcome relationship . We expand the prior exclusive focus on organizational identification to account for the likely important role played by an employee's relational identification with the leader. Relational identification represents the extent to which one defines oneself in terms of a given role-relationship (Sluss & Ashforth, 2007), in this case, Perhaps more importantly, we propose that these identification processes will operate differently for employees holding different implicit morality beliefs. Individuals hold and utilize different implicit theories to make sense of the social world (Gopnik & Wellman, 1994;Kelly, 1955). These beliefs represent unspoken assumptions that can influence how people understand and structure their experiences. Although the implicit theory of managers has been shown to influence procedural justice and performance appraisal of...

No abstract

This revelatory study focusses on top Financial Times (FT)-ranked British business school managers' cognitions of corporate brand building and management. The study insinuates that there is a prima facie bilateral link between corporate branding and strategic direction. The data revealed that, among this genus of business schools, corporate brand building entailed an ongoing concern along with strategic management, stakeholder management, corporate communications, service focus, leadership and commitment. These empirical findings chime with the early conceptual scholarship on corporate brand management dating back to the mid-1990s. These foundational articles stressed the multi-disciplinary and strategic nature of corporate brand management and stressed the significant role of the CEO. As such, this research adds further credence to the above in terms of best practice vis-à-vis corporate brand management. Curiously, although senior managers espouse a corporate brand orientation, corporate brand management is seemingly not accorded a similar status in the curriculum. Drawing on a general embedded case study methodological approach, data was collected from eight leading (FT-ranked) business schools in Great Britain at

No abstract

Although considerable research has been conducted on consumer attitude towards foreign products, most of these studies focus on the attitude of products from Western developed countries. Our study intends to investigate the effects of consumers' national identification and culture sensitivity on their perceived risk of buying products from Eastern developing countries. Especially, this study advances the literature by identifying the mediation effect of consumer ethnocentrism and the moderating effect of consumer value consciousness. Taking China and India as focal emerging economies, the consumer survey (n = 308) in the United Kingdom produced the following results. First, U.K. consumers' national identification is positively related to their perceived risk of buying Eastern products through consumer ethnocentrism, whereas their cultural sensitivity has a negative relationship. Second, the effect of consumer ethnocentrism on the perceived risk of buying Eastern products is moderated by consumer value consciousness. Third, value consciousness also attenuates the indirect relationships between national identification or cultural sensitivity and perceived risk via consumer ethnocentrism.