How leaders drive followers’ unethical behavior

Publication Type

Conference Proceeding Article

Publication Date

8-2022

Abstract

Numerous organizational scandals have implicated leaders who have encouraged employees to advance organizational objectives through unethical means. However, leaders’ encouragement of unethical behaviors is under-examined in leadership research. We define leader immorality encouragement (LIE) as an employee’s perception that his or her leader encourages unethical behaviors on behalf of the organization. Across four studies, we found that: (1) LIE promotes employees’ unethical pro-organizational behavior; (2) this relationship is mediated by employees’ moral disengagement and reward expectancy; (3) LIE, via moral disengagement, promotes employees’ self-serving unethical behavior; and (4) the association between LIE and unethical behavior is stronger when the leader and the employee have a high-quality exchange relationship and the employee perceives the leader as having high organizational status. Our set of findings shed light on leaders’ attempts to further organization objectives by encouraging unethical behavior.

Discipline

Organizational Behavior and Theory

Research Areas

Organisational Behaviour and Human Resources

Publication

Proceedings of the 82nd Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management (AOM 2022), Seattle, Washington, August 5-9

Identifier

10.5465/AMBPP.2022.12846abstract

Publisher

AOM

City or Country

U.S.

Additional URL

https://doi.org/10.5465/AMBPP.2022.12846abstract

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