The Consequence of Unethical Leader Behavior to Employee Well-Being: Does Support from the Organization Mitigate or Exacerbate the Stress Experience?

We explore how the impacts of unethical leadership are influenced either beneficially or detrimentally by perceived organizational support. A stress-resource view suggests organizational support is a resource that should offset the negative implications of unethical leadership. The negative exacerba...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Human performance 2022-10, Vol.35 (5), p.323-344
Main Authors: Hetrick, Andrea L., Mitchell, Marie S., Villarosa-Hurlocker, Margo C., Sullivan, Taylor S.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Business ethics
Employee morale
Ethics
Leadership
Organizational behavior
Stress
Well being
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:We explore how the impacts of unethical leadership are influenced either beneficially or detrimentally by perceived organizational support. A stress-resource view suggests organizational support is a resource that should offset the negative implications of unethical leadership. The negative exacerbator view suggests that receiving organizational support in light of unethical leadership should heighten the threat because it draws a stronger focus on and salience to the harm of the leader's behavior for the employee. The results of a time-separated survey study and an experiment support our model and the negative exacerbator view. The findings show that unethical leader behavior elicits negative affect and indirectly (through negative affect) diminishes employees' well-being and has a stronger effect when perceived organizational support was higher rather than lower.
ISSN:0895-9285
1532-7043
DOI:10.1080/08959285.2022.2123486