It's a Match: Moralization and the Effects of Moral Foundations Congruence on Ethical and Unethical Leadership Perception

While much research has focused on the effects of ethical and unethical leadership, little is known about how followers come to perceive their leaders as ethical or unethical. In this article, we investigate the co-creation of ethical and unethical leadership perceptions. Specifically, we draw from...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of business ethics 2020-12, Vol.167 (4), p.707-723
Main Authors: Egorov, Maxim, Kalshoven, Karianne, Verdorfer, Armin Pircher, Peus, Claudia
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Behavior
Business and Management
Business Ethics
Congruence
Dyads
Education
Ethics
Fairness
Leadership
Loyalty
Management
Morality
Organizational behavior
Original Paper
Perceptions
Philosophy
Quality of Life Research
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Summary:While much research has focused on the effects of ethical and unethical leadership, little is known about how followers come to perceive their leaders as ethical or unethical. In this article, we investigate the co-creation of ethical and unethical leadership perceptions. Specifically, we draw from emerging research on moral congruence in organizational behaviour and empirically investigate the role of congruence in leaders' and followers' moral foundations in followers' perceptions of ethical and unethical leadership. By analysing objective congruence scores from 67 leader-follower dyads by means of polynomial regression with surface response analysis, we find partial support for our theoretically derived predictions. Significant effects were revealed for the fairness, loyalty, and authority moral foundations but not for the care and sanctity moral foundations. We discuss theoretical and practical implications of these findings.
ISSN:0167-4544
1573-0697
DOI:10.1007/s10551-019-04178-9