Authors
Fabiola H Gerpott, Niels Van Quaquebeke, Sofia Schlamp, Sven C Voelpel
Publication date
2019/6/10
Journal
Journal of Business Ethics
Volume
156
Pages
1063-1078
Publisher
Springer Netherlands
Description
Despite the proliferation of research on ethical leadership, there remains a limited understanding of how specifically the assumingly moral component of this leadership style affects employee behavior. Taking an identity perspective, we integrate the ethical leadership literature with research on the dynamics of the moral self-concept to posit that ethical leadership will foster a sense of moral identity among employees, which then inspires followers to adopt more ethical actions, such as increased organization citizenship behavior (OCB). We further argue that these identity effects should be more pronounced when leaders are perceived to be group prototypical, as their actions then speak louder to followers’ sense of identity. Two studies—a scenario experiment with 138 participants and a field study with 225 employees—provided support for our hypothesized moderated mediation model. Perceived ethical …
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