Trickle-down effect of moral leadership on unethical employee behavior: a cross-level moderated mediation model
ISSN: 0048-3486
Article publication date: 9 June 2021
Issue publication date: 3 May 2022
Abstract
Purpose
Moral 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/approach
Through the questionnaire survey of 406 pairs of leaders and employees, and use multilevel path analysis, we test the hypothesis in this paper.
Findings
The 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/value
First, 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.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
Retraction notice: The publishers of Personnel Review wish to retract the article “Trickle-down effect of moral leadership on unethical employee behavior: a cross-level moderated mediation model” by R. Jiang and X. Lin which appeared in Volume 51, Issue 4, 2022.
It has come to our attention that large portions of the article are taken, without attribution, from the following source: Rui, J. and Xinqi, L. (2020), “Trickle-down effect of benevolent leadership on unethical employee behavior: a cross-level moderated mediation model”, Leadership & Organization Development Journal, Vol. 41 No. 6, pp. 721-740, DOI: 10.1108/LODJ-12-2019-0529.
The author guidelines of Personnel Review make it clear that submitted articles must be original.
The journal sincerely apologises to its readers.
Funding: China national nature science fund, 71502048
Disclosure statement: (1) We are sure the research is objective and transparent, and accepted principles of ethical and professional conduct have been followed. (2) No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Citation
Jiang, R. and Lin, X. (2022), "Trickle-down effect of moral leadership on unethical employee behavior: a cross-level moderated mediation model", Personnel Review, Vol. 51 No. 4, pp. 1362-1385. https://doi.org/10.1108/PR-04-2020-0257
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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