Ethical leadership, but toward whom? How moral identity congruence shapes the ethical treatment of employees

Abstract

Ethical leadership exerts a powerful influence on employees, and most studies share a basic premise that leaders display the same level of ethical leadership to all subordinates. However, we challenge this assumption and suggest that subordinates’ characteristics and supervisors’ characteristics may jointly influence supervisor ethical leadership behavior. Drawing upon research on person–supervisor fit and moral identity, we explore the questions of whether and how supervisor–subordinate (in)congruence in moral identity affects the emergence of supervisor ethical leadership behavior. Using multi-level and multi-source data, the results of cross-level polynomial regressions revealed that the less aligned a supervisor’s moral identity was with a subordinate’s, the more negative sentiments the supervisor held toward the subordinate, which, in turn, influenced the supervisor’s ethical leadership behavior. We also argue that not all types of congruence are alike. Our results confirmed that supervisor negative sentiments toward subordinates were higher in low–low congruence dyads than in high–high congruence dyads. Results also confirmed that by reducing supervisor negative sentiments toward subordinates, supervisor–subordinate congruence in moral identity had an indirect positive effect on supervisor ethical leadership behavior. Overall, this research highlights the importance of taking both subordinates’ and supervisors’ traits into consideration in understanding the emergence of ethical leadership.