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The purpose of this paper is to examine how ethical assessments of employees are influenced by job performance outcomes, that is, by an employee's success or failure as measured by a successful or unsuccessful job appraisal.

A sample of 180 employees rated the performance of a fictitious salesperson described in one of four written vignettes as successful/ethical, successful/unethical, unsuccessful/ethical or unsuccessful/unethical.

Job performance outcomes bias the ethical assessments of raters, even raters with stronger ethical beliefs. Successful employees were judged to have exhibited more ethical behaviors than unsuccessful employees.

Job performance outcomes are a systematic source of bias that should be examined to determine the locus of effect as either rater perception and/or recall of ethical behavior that is biased by the job outcomes achieved by ratees. Studies should also examine other rater characteristics such as cognitive moral development; whether ethical intensity of the incidents in the vignettes influences assessments; whether training or other sources of appraisal (e.g. customers or peers) moderates bias; and field settings.

Managers who reward unethical performance with positive job appraisals will influence other employees to be more accepting of unethical behavior and may undermine organizational processes such as background checks. Organizations may try to counter these effects by other sources of appraisal (e.g. customers or peers), training, or supplementary methods.

The research provides important new empirical evidence regarding incorporating ethical behavior into performance appraisals, and has implications for managers seeking to improve employees' ethical behaviors, and for researchers examining performance appraisals, cognition, ethics, and organizational processes.

The objective of this empirical study is to apply the methodology commonly used to performance appraisal and examine if outcomes achieved by ratees bias rater's judgment of ratee ethical behavior.

Two studies were conducted: in study 1 the participants were undergraduate business students and in study 2, the participants were MBA students but who were also full time employees. In both these studies, participants read the vignettes and rated the ratee performance using behavior observation scale.

Both the studies found support for the main hypothesis that outcomes achieved by the ratees influenced judgment of ethical behavior. The hypothesis that ethical beliefs of raters will moderate the biasing influence of outcomes on ethical judgment bias was not supported.

If outcomes achieved by employees influence judgment of ethical behavior, future research has to examine how the biasing influence of outcomes on ethical judgments can be mitigated or eliminated.

If managers are influence by outcomes achieved by their employees in judging the ethical behavior, it can lead to “success breeds acceptance” culture. If organizations place undue emphasis on outcomes at the cost of ethical standards, unethical behavior of individuals could be condoned or justified which would lead to worsening of ethical climate in these organizations.

This study demonstrated that outcomes achieved by employees biases judgment of their ethical behavior and this finding has important implications for designing effective appraisal systems for assessing ethical behavior of employees.

Business ethics provide a potent source of competitive advantage, placing increasing pressure on organizations to create and maintain an ethical workforce. Nonetheless, ethical breaches continue to permeate corporate life, suggesting that there is something missing from how we conceptualize and institutionalize organizational ethics. The current effort seeks to fill this void in two ways. First, we introduce an extended ethical framework premised on sensemaking in organizations. Within this framework, we suggest that multiple individual, organizational, and societal factors may differentially influence the ethical sensemaking process. Second, we contend that human resource management plays a central role in sustaining workplace ethics and explore the strategies through which human resource personnel can work to foster an ethical culture and spearhead ethics initiatives. Future research directions applicable to scholars in both the ethics and human resources domains are provided.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of ethical leadership on surface acting, positive mood and affective commitment via the mediating effect of employee frustration. The authors also explored the moderating role of humor on the relationship between ethical leadership and frustration as well as its moderating effect on the mediational chain.

Data were collected in two separate surveys from 156 individuals working fulltime; data collections were separated by six weeks to reduce common method variance. The measurement model was confirmed before the authors tested the moderated mediation model.

Ethical leadership was negatively related to employee frustration, and frustration mediated the relationships between ethical leadership and surface acting and positive mood but not affective commitment. Humor moderated the relationship between ethical leadership and frustration such that when humor was low, the relationship was stronger.

Interestingly, the authors failed to find a significant effect for any of the relationships between ethical leadership and affective commitment. Ethical leaders can enhance positive mood and reduce surface acting among employees by reducing frustration. Humor may be more important under conditions of unethical leadership but may be distracting under ethical leadership.

This study demonstrates how frustration acts as a mediator and humor serves as a moderator in the unethical behavior-outcomes relationship.

Prior studies have extensively explored individual examples of unethical behavior in sales organizations but focused little on repeated violation (RV) of ethical codes, particularly when managers develop salesforces. Based on social learning theory (SLT), the authors propose a multilevel model of RV antecedents and suggest that organizational influence (social cues and modeling) and individual factors (observer characteristics and behavioral outcomes) affect RV, especially with increasing recruitment of salespeople.

Using data from a leading financial company in Taiwan, the authors analyzed 1,231 records of salespeople’s misbehavior through logistic regression and average marginal effects.

Modeling in the organization (i.e. peer misconduct), observer characteristics (i.e. experience concerning job tenure and prior violations) and behavioral outcomes (i.e. information concealment violations) were all found to affect the likelihood of RV, and the interactional effect of organizational size was confirmed.

This study contributes to ethical decision-making theory by explaining aspects of RV through SLT. Its multilevel model, integrated with organizational strategy theories, adds an SLT-focused paradigm into unethical behavior research by considering vicarious learning and self-learning, alongside the reciprocal determinism of cognition, behavior, and environment.

Managers should consider socially based patterns of violation when initiating a sales business plan. The chances of RV are increased by unethical models in the organization and offenders’ potential for violations, which is reinforced by social environment.

This study clarified the key drivers of RV decision-making using SLT and identified an effective sales development strategy to maintain an ethically responsible salesforce.

This study aims to examine the scientific publications related to leadership research in hospitality from 2000 to 2021 by conducting a systematic review (qualitative) and to discuss implications for future research.

For the qualitative approach, the authors conduct an in-depth critique of major leadership theories using 167 articles indexed in the Web of Science Core Collection.

The findings show that transformational leadership, leader–member exchange and servant leadership are the most prominent leadership topics studied from 2000 to 2021, followed by abusive supervision, empowering leadership, ethical leadership and authentic leadership. A framework is presented highlighting the mediators, moderators, outcomes, sample and research designs used in each of these lines of leadership research. Moreover, 16 areas for further research are identified and discussed.

This review uncovers scholars’ general lack of regard for how the study of leadership might benefit from examining hospitality as a special and challenging context for leadership and business performance.

This study reviews and critically analyzes leadership research in hospitality using qualitative methods. Therefore, the authors believe this review is of great value to academics and practitioners because it synthesizes and analyzes the field and identifies important research opportunities.

The success and long-term survival of service organizations depend on employee behavior such as work engagement and creativity. In this study, The authors intend to investigate employee engagement and creativity in the hospitality industry based on the theory of social exchange. In addition, The authors explore the mediating role of employee ambidexterity between ethical leadership and employee work engagement and between ethical leadership and employee creativity.

Through an online survey questionnaire, data were collected from 246 workers in the hospitality industry in Pakistan. Smart-PLS version 3 was used to analyze the data.

The results of the structural equation modeling reveal that ethical leadership has a positive association with work engagement and employee creativity in the hospitality industry. Results further reveal that employee ambidexterity significantly mediates the relationships between ethical leadership and work engagement and between ethical leadership and employee creativity.

This study not only makes an important contribution to the literature on the role of employee ambidexterity in the hospitality industry but will also help service businesses in managing their employees more effectively.

This study investigates the benefits of ethical leadership behaviors for leaders themselves and the underlying mechanisms and boundary conditions of this effect.

Using a multi-time and multi-source survey design, data was collected from both leaders and subordinates across three waves.

Ethical leadership behavior was found to be positively associated with the leader’s moral pride, resulting in the leader’s higher in-role performance and perceived manager effectiveness. The effect of ethical leadership behavior was moderated by core self-evaluation (CSE), such that low-CSE leaders benefit more from these behaviors.

Organizations should encourage ethical leadership behaviors and educate leaders to develop moral pride from conducting these behaviors. Leaders with low CSEs can enhance their in-role performance and overall effectiveness by taking pride in their ethical leadership behaviors.

The field of study on ethical leadership has predominantly focused on the positive outcomes for recipients, yet it is imperative to examine the self-benefits for leaders as well. This study drew upon affective events theory to posit that ethical leadership behaviors generate moral pride in leaders, leading to improved work-related attitudes and performance outcomes.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of self-other rating agreement (SOA) on ethical decisions and behavior.

A sample of 169 students (60 women and 109 men) enrolled in a part-time, regional MBA program was divided into three SOA categories: (1) Self-aware, individuals whose self-ratings matched observer ratings, (2) Underraters, those whose self-ratings were lower than observer ratings and (3) Overraters, individuals whose self-ratings were higher than other ratings. Ethical behavior was evaluated with the completion of a managerial in-basket assessment.

The results revealed that ethical behavior varied by SOA, with underraters exhibiting the highest levels of ethical behavior, followed by self-aware (i.e. accurate) and then overraters. One of the intriguing results is that underraters displayed more ethical behaviors than accurate raters, raising questions about the use of accurate self-assessments as an indicator of personal and professional effectiveness.

The results indicate that organizations should consider SOA in their human resource processes because it has important implications for employee training, selection and promotion. While prior research has examined the effect of SOA on performance, commitment and leadership perceptions, the authors contribute to the literature by examining whether SOA influences actual ethical decisions and actions.

Motivation constitutes a central topic for business management, because of its critical impact on job performance. Therefore, understanding whether and how the style of leadership adopted by leaders in organizations promotes and maintains employee motivation is of great interest to both scholars and practitioners. Drawing on self-determination theory, this study investigates how ethical and emotional styles of leadership influence employee motivation and thus job performance.

An empirical study was conducted in the public sector in Kuwait. About 607 employees participated in this study. Structural equation modeling techniques were used for testing the causal relationships between constructs.

Results of our study indicate that both ethical and emotional leaderships enhance employee motivation. Furthermore, employee motivation has a positive impact on job performance. The results also show that job performance exerts a negative effect on quitting intentions. Finally, interest in the private sector moderates the job performance–quitting intentions relationship.

These findings provide theoretical contributions to the extant literature, as well as important practical implications for managers.

This study demonstrates the role of both ethical and emotional leaderships in shaping employee behaviors. To the best of our knowledge, this research is among the few that provides initial evidence regarding quitting intentions as an outcome of the impact of ethical and emotional leaderships on employee motivation and individual performance in Kuwait.