Abstract
Authoritarian leadership is of great significance to eastern countries, including China. Meanwhile, unethical employee behavior also exists in all types of social organizations. The relationship between authoritarian leadership and unethical employee behavior is worth studying. Senior leaders (managers) often do not have a direct influence on employees except for through their immediate supervisors. The leadership style of senior leaders also influences the leadership style of their subordinates (employees’ direct supervisors). This paper studies how authoritarian manager leadership trickles down to unethical employee behavior through authoritarian supervisor leadership (through social learning theory and ASA theory) and discusses the moderating effect of leader member exchange (LMX) and an ethical climate. Through a questionnaire survey of 406 pairs of leaders, supervisors, and employees, the research results of the multilevel model show that (1) authoritarian supervisor leadership is positively related to unethical employee behavior, (2) authoritarian supervisor leadership mediates the relationship between authoritarian manager leadership and unethical employee behavior, (3) LMX positively moderates the relationship between authoritarian manager leadership and authoritarian supervisor leadership and moderates the mediating effect of authoritarian supervisor leadership, and (4), that an ethical climate negatively moderates the relationship between authoritarian supervisor leadership and unethical employee behavior and moderates the mediating effect of authoritarian supervisor leadership.
Highlights
Previous research has shown that there are factors that influence the unethical behavior of employees, such as time pressure (Koh et al, 2018), the organizational climate (Zaal et al, 2019), and challenging performance goals (Welsh et al, 2019)
The scale of authoritarian supervisor leadership and the ethical climate was completed by employees, and the scale of authoritarian manager leadership, leader member exchange (LMX), and unethical employee behavior was completed by supervisors
Because the scale pertaining to authoritarian supervisor leadership and the ethical climate was completed by employees and the authoritarian manager leadership and LMX scales were completed by supervisors, it is necessary to test their internal consistency (Rwg) and internal correlation (ICC), to aggregate them at the team or organizational level for testing
Summary
Previous research has shown that there are factors that influence the unethical behavior of employees, such as time pressure (Koh et al, 2018), the organizational climate (Zaal et al, 2019), and challenging performance goals (Welsh et al, 2019). Existing research on the influence of unethical employee behavior mainly focuses on the leadership styles proposed in a western context, and relatively little is known about. Moral Leadership leadership styles in non-western contexts, such as the leadership style in the context of eastern countries, including China, where authoritarian leadership is more common. There is a clear difference between authoritarian leadership and the leadership style proposed in the western context, for example, servant leadership includes guiding, supporting democracy, and delegation (Chughtai, 2019). Ethical leadership mainly refers to situations in which leaders require themselves and their subordinates to behave in an ethical way (Haar et al, 2019)
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