Abstract
Corruption devours profts, people, and the planet. Ethical leaders promote ethical
behaviors. We develop a frst-stage moderated mediation theoretical model, explore
the intricate relationships between ethical leadership (member rated, Time 1) and
employee ethical behaviors (leader rated, Time 3), and treat ethical climate and
organizational justice (member rated,Time 2) as dual mediators and leaders’ moral
attentiveness (leader rated, Time 3) as a moderator. We investigate leadership from
two perspectives—leaders’ self-evaluation of moral attentiveness and members’
perceptions of ethical leadership. We theorize: These dual mediation mechanisms
are more robust for high moral leaders than low moral leaders. Our three-wave data
collected from multiple sources, 236 members and 98 immediate supervisors in the
Republic of Iraq, support our theory. Specifcally, ethical leadership robustly impacts
organizational justice’s intensity and magnitude, leading to high employee ethical
behaviors when leaders’ moral attentiveness is high than low. However, ethical leadership only infuences the ethical climate’s intensity but has no impact on the magnitude when leaders’ moral attentiveness is high than low. Therefore, organizational
justice is a more robust mediator than the ethical climate in the omnibus context
of leader moral attentiveness. Our fndings support Western theory and constructs,
demonstrating a new theory for Muslims in Arabic’s emerging markets. Individual
decision-makers (subordinates) apply their values (ethical leadership) as a lens to
frame their concerns in the immediate (organizational justice and ethical climate)
and omnibus (leader moral attentiveness) contexts to maximize their expected utility and ultimate serenity-happiness. Ethical leadership trickles down to employee
ethical behaviors, providing practical implications for improving the ethical environment, corporate social responsibility, leader-member exchange (LMX), business ethics, and economic potentials in the global competitive markets.