Abstract
The effectiveness of ethical leadership has been extensively investigated. However, compared to the outcomes of ethical leadership, we still lack enough knowledge about the mechanisms underlying ethical leadership and its outcomes. Drawing from social information processing theory, this paper explores an emotional explanation for the effectiveness of ethical leadership. Adopting a time-lagged research design with responses from 64 leaders and 289 followers, the present research found that ethical leadership invokes followers’ other-praising emotions and eventually enhances their moral actions. Further, leader core self-evaluation contributes to the positive effects of ethical leadership on followers’ other-praising moral emotions and subsequent moral actions. Theoretical and practical implementations of these observations were discussed.
Highlights
As ethical scandals are cropping up more frequently in recent times and in view of its unique effectiveness in modeling behavioral ethicality, ethical leadership is receiving greater research attention (Brown and Treviño, 2006; Demirtas and Akdogan, 2015)
We focus on other-praising moral emotions to answer how followers translate ethical leadership into their own moral behaviors
We propose that when the leader has high core selfevaluation, the positive effect of ethical leadership on followers’ other-praising moral emotions get strengthened
Summary
As ethical scandals are cropping up more frequently in recent times and in view of its unique effectiveness in modeling behavioral ethicality, ethical leadership is receiving greater research attention (Brown and Treviño, 2006; Demirtas and Akdogan, 2015). 120), ethical leadership has been reported to have positive effects on a range of follower outcomes including task performance (Bouckenooghe et al, 2015), perceived leader effectiveness (Brown et al, 2005), organizational citizenship behavior (Piccolo et al, 2010), work place deviance (Resick et al, 2013), ethical behaviors (Mayer et al, 2009), and prosocial behaviors (Kalshoven et al, 2013). In spite of such empirical support, several researchers (Brown and Treviño, 2006; Bouckenooghe et al, 2015) have noted that our understanding of ethical leadership and its impacts on follower actions need to be improved due to the following reasons. In comparison to the numerous outcomes of ethical leadership, little is known about the mechanisms through which ethical leaders trigger followers’ moral actions. Ethical Leadership and Moral Actions without investigating the mechanisms that drive the influence of ethical leadership on follower moral actions, we would not reach a comprehensive understanding about the effectiveness of ethical leadership
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
