Despite the general expectation that ethical leadership fosters employees’ ethical behaviors, surprisingly little empirical effort has been made to verify this expected effect of ethical leadership. To address this research gap, we examine the role of ethical leadership in relation to a direct ethical outcome of employees: moral voice. Focusing on how and when ethical leadership motivates employees to speak up about ethical issues, we propose that moral efficacy serves as a psychological mechanism underlying the relationship, and that leader–follower value (...) congruence serves as a boundary condition for the effect of ethical leadership on moral efficacy. We tested the proposed relationships with matched reports from 154 Korean white-collar employees and their immediate supervisors, collected at two different points in time. The results revealed that ethical leadership was positively related to moral voice, and moral efficacy mediated the relationship. Importantly, as the relationship between ethical leadership and moral efficacy depended on leader–follower value congruence, the mediated relationship was effective only under high leader–follower value congruence. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. (shrink)

The authors provide this addendum to the following article to provide corrections to the results reported and further explanation of the structural equation modeling techniques utilized: Sean T. Hannah, Bruce J. Avolio, and Fred O. Walumbwa, “The Relationships between Authentic Leadership, Moral Courage, and Ethical and Pro-Social Behaviors,” Business Ethics Quarterly 21:4 : 555–78.

This study examines factors impacting organizational commitment of 214 employees working at a Chinese state-owned steel company. Ethical behavior of peers and ethical behavior of successful managers had a significant impact on organizational commitment. The four facets of job satisfaction (pay, coworker, supervision, and work itself) had a significant impact on organizational commitment. Respondent’s age also significantly impacted organizational commitment. Perceptions of ethical behavior of successful managers, satisfaction with work, and gender were significantly correlated with social desirability bias.

Deontology and utilitarianism are two competing principles that guide our moral judgment. Recently, deontology is thought to be intuitive and is based on an error-prone and biased approach, whereas utilitarianism is relatively reflective and a suitable framework for making decision. In this research, the authors explored the relationship among moral identity, moral decision, and moral behavior to see how a preference for the deontological solution can lead to moral behavior. In study 1, a Web-based survey demonstrated that when making decisions, (...) individuals who viewed themselves as moral people preferred deontological ideals to the utilitarian framework. In study 2, the authors investigated the effect of moral identity and moral decision on moral behavior in an experimental study. The results showed that when deontology was coupled with the motivational power of moral identity, individuals were most likely to behave morally. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Organizations constitute morally-complex environments, requiring organization members to possess levels of moral courage sufficient to promote their ethical action, while refraining from unethical actions when faced with temptations or pressures. Using a sample drawn from a military context, we explored the antecedents and consequences of moral courage. Results from this four-month field study demonstrated that authentic leadership was positively related to followers’ displays of moral courage. Further, followers’ moral courage fully mediated the effects of authentic leadership on followers’ ethical and (...) pro-social behaviors. Theoretical and practical implications for further integrating the work on moral courage, authentic leadership and ethics are discussed. (shrink)

We studied the impact of teachers’ ethical leadership on students’ moral identity and academic citizenship behaviors. Data from 256 student–teacher matching dyads were collected from one of the top 5 Pakistani business schools. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to ensure factorial validity of the measures that were employed, and the hypothesized relationships were tested using structural regression models that utilized structural equation modeling in AMOS with 5,000 bootstrap samples. Based on social learning theory, the results supported the hypothesis that teachers’ (...) ethical leadership had significant direct and indirect positive effects on the students’ academic citizenship behaviors that were directed toward other students and the school. This study contributes to existing literature on ethical leadership and organizational citizenship behavior by highlighting useful implications of these organization-based constructs in an academic context. (shrink)

Ethical leadership matters in the context of organizational change due to the need for followers to trust the integrity of their leaders. Yet, there have been no studies investigating ethical leadership and organizational change. To fill this gap, we introduce a model of the moderating role of involvement in change. Organizational change and involvement in change are proposed as context-level moderators in the relationships of ethical leadership and work-related attitudes and performance. We employ a sample of 199 supervisor–subordinate pairs from (...) a wide variety of organizations. Results support a three-way interaction (ethical leadership, organizational change, and involvement in change) for performance and OCBs. Our results have important implications for organizational change since ethical leadership appears to complement follower involvement when change is happening. (shrink)

Abstract:To date, our understanding of ethical decision making and behavior in organizations has been concentrated in the area of moral judgment, largely because of the hundreds of studies done involving cognitive moral development. This paper addresses the problem of our relative lack of understanding in other areas of human morality by applying a recently developed construct—moral approbation—to illuminate the link between moral judgment and moral action. This recent work is extended here by exploring the effect that organizations have on ethical (...) behavior in terms of the moral approbation construct. (shrink)