Who's leading whom? Mutual influences in moral decision making between leaders and subordinates over time

Abstract

Leaders are frequently said to shape ethical conduct of subordinates in organizations in a top- down manner. Yet, subordinates may also exert important influence on leaders. Building on research on collaborative corruption and ethical leadership, we present two preregistered studies (N = 874) that examine the social dynamics affecting ethical decision-making in leader–subordinate dyads. Using a novel collaborative-cheating task, we study how the mutual influence of leaders on subordinates and of subordinates on leaders unfolds over repeated interactions. We find strong mutualistic influences on ethical behavior in leader– subordinate dyads, and the degree and direction of these influences is moderated by the ethical make-up of these dyads, i.e., the willingness of individual leaders and subordinates to engage in dishonest conduct in the first place. Additionally, we find congruency effects for character judgments such that dyads that cheat together evaluate each other positively and especially competent and close.