An Identity Perspective on Ethical Leadership to Explain Organizational Citizenship Behavior: The Interplay of Follower Moral Identity and Leader Group Prototypicality

Abstract

Despite the proliferation of research on ethical leadership, there remains a limited understanding of how specifically the assumingly moral component of this leadership style affects employee behavior. Taking an identity perspective, we integrate the ethical leadership literature with research on the dynamics of the moral self-concept to posit that ethical leadership will foster a sense of moral identity among employees, which then inspires followers to adopt more ethical actions, such as increased organization citizenship behavior (OCB). We further argue that these identity effects should be more pronounced when leaders are perceived to be group prototypical, as their actions then speak louder to followers' sense of identity. Two studiesa scenario experiment with 138 participants and a field study with 225 employees-provided support for our hypothesized moderated mediation model. Perceived ethical leadership positively affected OCB via followers' moral identity but only under conditions of high perceived leader group prototypicality. We discuss how the identity pathway of ethical leadership can facilitate novel theorizing about moral transference. Our findings also suggest that, when hiring external ethical leaders or training internal managers, practitioners are well advised to consider that these individuals may only be effective in morally transforming followers when they are perceived as prototypical for the group.

The Power of Good: A Leader's Personal Power as a Mediator of the Ethical Leadership-Follower Outcomes Link

“…Extending the current research state, the present study first examined the moderating function of follower moral identity as a self-concept based personality variable, thus adding further insight in the followers' active role in the ethical leadership process. Coincidently, our findings contradict the results of several studies that detected the effects of ethical leadership on an employee's moral identity (Wen and Chen, 2016 ; Gerpott et al, 2017 ; Bavik et al, 2018 ), as ethical leadership and moral identity were unrelated in both of our studies, but they exhibited an interaction effect. Thus, the present studies add a new perspective on the relationship between ethical leadership and follower moral identity.…”

“…The role of a leader's moral identity with respect to the emergence of ethical leadership behavior has been confirmed (e.g., Mayer et al, 2012 ). Furthermore, several studies indicate that ethical leadership enhances an employee's moral identity (Wen and Chen, 2016 ; Gerpott et al, 2017 ; Bavik et al, 2018 ). However, the function of an employee's moral identity in the processing of ethical leadership behavior related to the evolution of follower outcomes has not been explored to date.…”

How certain can we really be that our boss is trustworthy, and does it matter? A metacognitive perspective on employee evaluations of supervisor trustworthiness

“…For instance, sharing information about oneself and being forthright in their communications with employees should lead to greater perceived relational transparency. Similarly, Gerpott, Van Quaquebeke, Schlamp, andVoelpel (2019, p. 1073) suggested that interactive workshops focused on defining norms and values could serve the dual purpose of "helping leaders understand how to position themselves as more group prototypical and helping group members realize the more group prototypical aspects of their leaders." In addition, the metacognition literature highlights other strategies for impacting evaluative certainty.…”

Leader Endorsement: The Role of Leader Prototypicality, Leader Effectiveness and Employee’s Organizational Identification

“…Because prototypical leader are seen as trusted source of information, prototypical leaders can reduce the uncertainty of subordinates regarding organizational identity so that subordinates are more confident to provide support (Hohman, Gaffney, & Hogg, 2017). Besides, prototypical leaders are considered to represent the characteristics of the organization, so that support and morale from subordinates will also upsurge because they are led by people who have similarities with their organization (Gerpott, Van Quaquebeke, Schlamp, & Voelpel, 2019).…”