Trickle-down effect of moral leadership on unethical employee behavior: a cross-level moderated mediation model

PurposeMoral leadership is a common leadership style in Chinese society and is of great significance to Chinese organizations. Unethical employee behavior also widely exists in all kinds of social organizations and brings great harm. The research on the relationship between moral leadership and unethical employee behavior has not been involved yet, but it is important. This paper studies how moral manager (senior leader) leadership trickles down to unethical employee behavior through moral supervisor (employee direct supervisor) leadership, and discusses the moderating effect of LMX and ethical climate.Design/methodology/approachThrough the questionnaire survey of 406 pairs of leaders and employees, and use multilevel path analysis, we test the hypothesis in this paper.FindingsThe research results show that (1) Moral manager leadership is negatively related to unethical employee behavior. (2) Moral supervisor leadership mediates the relationship between moral manager leadership and unethical employee behavior. (3) LMX positively moderates the relationship between moral manager leadership and moral supervisor leadership, and moderates the mediating effect of moral supervisor leadership. (4) Ethical climate positively moderates the relationship between moral supervisor leadership and unethical employee behavior, and moderates the mediating effect of moral supervisor leadership.Originality/valueFirst, this study further proves that moral leadership is a popular positive leadership among the three dimensions of paternalistic leadership that extends its influence to unethical employee behavior. Second, this study traces the source of the moral leadership of employees' supervisors and reveals the action mechanism of how moral manager leadership affects unethical employee behavior. Finally, LMX provides the organizational context of the trickle-down effect and the occurrence of unethical employee behavior.

A study on the effect of ethical leadership on teachers’ moral motivation at schools in Pakistan

PurposeThe purpose of this study was to examine the influence of ethical leadership on moral motivation of teachers in the schools of Pakistan.Design/methodology/approachScenario-based experimental design was used to collect data (N = 174 teachers) from 25 schools in the city of Islamabad. Participants included 156 females and 18 males aged 23–37 years. Ethical leadership was measured at both construct and component levels (moral person and moral manager).FindingsThe results found that the moral person component of ethical leadership style heightens the moral identity (internalization)-based moral motivation, while the moral manager component and ethical leadership at construct level style increases moral identity (symbolization)-based moral motivation. Interestingly, in the absence of reward, only the moral person component of ethical leadership style maintained participants’ moral motivation.Originality/valueThe originality of this study lies in highlighting the divergence in ethical leadership style at component level that explains the differences in moral motivation of the teachers.