When Do Ethical Leaders Become Less Effective? The Moderating Role of Perceived Leader Ethical Conviction on Employee Discretionary Reactions to Ethical Leadership

Abstract

Drawing from the group engagement model and the moral conviction literature, we propose that perceived leader ethical conviction moderates the relationship between ethical leadership and employee OCB as well as deviance. In a field study of employees from various industries and a scenario-based experiment, we revealed that both the positive relation between ethical leadership and employee OCB and the negative relation between ethical leadership and employee deviance are more pronounced when leaders are perceived to have weak rather than strong ethical convictions. Further, we argued and showed that employees' feelings of personal control and perceived voice opportunity mediated the interactive effect of ethical leadership and perceived leader ethical conviction on OCB and deviance. Implications of these findings for theory and practice are discussed.

Proposed Ethical Work Behavior Model in Boundaries of Organizational Domain

“…Social constructionists posit that cognitive beliefs congruence influence ethical behaviors not through reflective processes but rather the perception of socially learned responses to emotional arousal [6]. This study classified cognitive beliefs according to two dimensions ethical identity and active emotions.…”

“…Ethical decision-making is part of cognitive components of response regarding some aspect considered as illegal or factors violates social norms. The emotional components of the ethical behavior include feelings, moods, sentiments, and attitudes toward an issue or decision [6], whereas the cognitive components include conscious beliefs, knowledge, perceptions, and judgments [7]. Many theories have been developed such as ethical-decision making theory in marketing which introduced by Dubinsky & Loken [8]; four-components model by Rest [9]; contingency theory by Ferrell & Gresham [10]; general theory of marketing ethics by Hunt & Vitell [11]; person-situation interactionism model by Treviño [12] and issue contingent model by [13].…”

Deepening Ethical Analysis in Business Ethics

“…The Moderating Role of Perceived Leader Ethical Conviction on Employee Discretionary Reactions to Ethical Leadership, " Babalola, Stouten, Camps and Euwema (2017) argue that the current theories of ethical leadership are inadequate along several dimensions. Leaders' perceived ethical commitment helps to predict both employee organizational citizenship behavior as well as deviance from such behavior.…”

Do Business Ethics and Ethical Decision Making Still Matter: Perspective of Different Generational Cohorts

“…The starting point for business ethics is primarily from organizational managers and leaders who present a key to creating an ethical climate in their organization. When ethical leaders fairly treat their employees and exhibit a high level of ethical conduct, they provide examples for their employees; create a positive ethical climate and a sense of obligation for their employees to reciprocate similar behaviour (Babalola et al, 2019). Furthermore, employees' perception of their leader's ethics can be seen as a strong predictor of ethical practice (Greenwood et al, 2018).…”