Abstract
The literature on ethical leadership has focused primarily on the way ethical leaders influence follower moral judgment and behavior. It has overlooked that follower responses to ethical leaders may differ depending on the attention they pay to the moral aspects of leadership. In the present research, we introduce moral attentiveness as an important moderator for the relationship between ethical leadership and unethical employee behavior. In a multisource field study (N = 90), we confirm our hypothesis that morally attentive followers respond with more deviance to unethical leaders. An experimental study (N = 96) replicates the finding. Our paper extends the current leader-focused literature by examining how follower moral attentiveness determines the response of followers to ethical or unethical leadership. (C) 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 190-203 |
Number of pages | 14 |
Journal | Leadership Quarterly |
Volume | 26 |
Issue number | 2 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Apr 2015 |
Keywords
- ABUSIVE SUPERVISION
- CITIZENSHIP BEHAVIOR
- CLIMATE
- DECISION-MAKING
- Ethical leadership
- LOOK-UP
- Moral attentiveness
- Organizational deviance
- PROCEDURAL FAIRNESS
- RESEARCH AGENDA
- SELF
- SOCIAL IDENTITY
- WORKPLACE DEVIANCE