How leaders drive followers’ unethical behavior

Publication Type

Journal Article

Publication Date

9-2023

Abstract

Numerous organizational scandals have implicated leaders in encouraging employees to advance organizational objectives through unethical means. However, leadership research has not examined leaders’ encouragement of unethical behaviors. We define leader immorality encouragement (LIE) as an employee's perception that their leader encourages unethical behaviors on behalf of the organization. Across four studies, we found, as hypothesized, that (1) LIE promotes employees’ unethical behavior carried out with the intention to aid the organization (unethical pro-organizational behavior); (2) this relationship is mediated by employees’ moral disengagement and the expectation of rewards; (3) LIE, via moral disengagement, enhances employees’ self-serving unethical behavior; and (4) the relationship between LIE and unethical behavior is stronger when the leader has a higher quality exchange relationship with the employee and is perceived by the employee as having higher organizational status. Our set of findings contributes to an understanding of leaders’ attempts to further organization objectives by encouraging the unethical behavior of subordinates.

Keywords

unethical behavior, leadership, leader immorality encouragement, moral disengagement, pro-organizational behavior, ethical decision-making, leader–member exchange, organizational status, rewards expectations, organizational misconduct

Discipline

Organizational Behavior and Theory

Research Areas

Organisational Behaviour and Human Resources

Publication

Journal of Management

Volume

49

Issue

7

First Page

2318

Last Page

2353

ISSN

0149-2063

Identifier

10.1177/01492063221104031

Publisher

SAGE Publications

Additional URL

https://doi.org/10.1177/01492063221104031

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