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This paper aims to propose a multilevel framework of fashion consumer ethics that unpacks how ethical consumers publicly express their identity through sustainable fashion (SF). The author explores SF’s cognitive, relational and contextual dynamics, highlighting how attitude–behavior (A-B) gaps might impede consumers’ ethical identity and social image alignment.

The framework theoretically reconstructs fashion consumer ethics by integrating social intuitionism, social representation theory and the public sphere. This theorizing process sheds light on fragmented attempts found in previous research to understand how ethical consumers express their self-identity and socially represent their image through SF, avoiding A-B gaps.

The theoretical propositions suggest how ethical consumers’ self-concept is expressed at the cognitive level, leading to ethical commitment toward self-associated fashion brands; social image is manifested at the relational level, giving rise to consumers’ ethical engagement in SF; and ethical consumers’ self-verify their identity-image alignment in the public sphere, thus addressing A-B issues.

The sociopsychological approach suggests a novel understanding of ethical consumers’ individual and social representation through SF consumption. The framework interprets SF as an “aesthetic of existence,” co-constructed collectively and symbolically expressed publicly. As a result, the proposed model combines different theories to introduce new causal mechanisms and constructs of ethical consumers’ cognition, sociological relations and public spheres.

The commentary aims to consider the nexus between corporate marketing, ethical corporate marketing, ethical corporate identity and corporate social responsibility. It seeks to take an explicit internal organisational perspective. It also aims to identify future research avenues.

The commentary explains the relevance of the previous interlinking concepts with a discussion based on a review of past and current research.

While highlighting the need for a fundamental reappraisal of marketing at the organisational level, it outlines potential problems and pitfalls with internal organisational ethical alignment, between employees and their organisation's ethical corporate identity.

Enhanced appreciation for ethical corporate marketing and identity along with some of the challenges faced with internal ethical alignment, can help organisations and institutions to become more astute with the management of internal stakeholder relationships.

The employee perspective for ethical corporate marketing, ethical corporate identity and corporate social responsibility are all relatively under‐researched. This commentary attempts to address this by providing an overview of these intertwining concepts in relation to internal ethical concerns.

The current body of research has separately examined ethics education design and evaluation, as well as the development of ethical identity in managers. However, a notable deficiency in the literature lies in the absence of a comprehensive investigation into the interconnections between these two areas. This conceptual paper aims to address this lacuna.

Building on the theoretical foundations of identity control theory, this paper presents a conceptual model that outlines the dynamics of ethics education for managers, whether outside the organization or as a human resource development (HRD) initiative. Drawing upon a diverse range of literature sources, the model places significant emphasis on the interactive nature of identity formation, taking into account both individual agency and the educational context.

The conceptual model developed based on identity control theory illuminates the functioning of ethics education and its impact. The model illustrates the multifaceted nature of the relationship between ethics education and the development and sustenance of ethical identity in managers. It underscores the iterative process of identity control, wherein managers continuously navigate their ethical identities in response to internal and external influences.

While ethics education in management and HRD studies is widely acknowledged, there is a significant gap in understanding the psychological mechanisms that explain the maintenance of self-identity and the dynamic interplay between individuals and their social environment. This gap is particularly relevant to educational programs, which not only shape the social environment for trainees but also aim to foster the development and preservation of their individual identities.

The objective of this study is to examine the predicting role of Machiavellianism, locus of control and moral identity on ethical leadership. This study also assessed the moderating role of ethical role modelling in the linkage between Machiavellianism, locus of control, moral identity and ethical leadership.

A total of 202 public service leaders in Malaysia participated in the study. A quantitative study was conducted and structural equation modelling was used to test the hypotheses.

Moral identity poses a substantial influence on ethical leadership. Ethical role modelling is a significant moderator in the association between moral identity and ethical leadership.

This study contributes to the social learning theory by assessing Machiavellianism, locus of control and moral identity as the predictors of ethical leadership among public service leaders in Malaysia. Future study can be further extended to both managerial and support staff to understand the ethical phenomenon in Malaysian public sector.

The study highlights the need for public sector to give considerable attention to moral identity in boosting ethical leadership among public service leaders in Malaysia's public sector. Furthermore, the element of ethical role modelling should not be neglected as this factor is a valid moderator in nurturing ethical leadership among public service leaders.

The study deepens the knowledge on the importance of ethical role modelling as a moderator in assessing the influence of the predictors on ethical leadership. Further, this study demonstrates that public service leaders who reported high moral identity would have higher ethical leadership if they experienced good ethical role modelling.

The widespread use of communication technologies and social media platforms such as the #ME TOO movement has amplified the importance for business leaders to demonstrate high standards of ethical behavior for career success. Although the concept of ethical leadership has been widely investigated, a theoretical framework from a career perspective does not yet exist.

This study draws from sensemaking theory to argue that career identity salience shapes leaders' communication behavior to influence the extent to which they are perceived to be ethical by subordinates. We test our hypotheses using multisource data with a sample (n = 337) of business managers.

The results show that career identity salience has positive influence on communication competence, which positively influences ethical leadership. We further find that communication frequency positively moderates the relationship between communication competence and ethical leadership.

The theoretical and practical implications that, motivated by their career identity, career-ambitious leaders can manipulate subordinates' perceptions of their ethical behavior are discussed along with suggestions for future research.

To our knowledge, this is the first research to provide a career perspective on ethical leadership.

Drawing upon social learning theory (SLT), the study examines the consequences of ethical leadership on followers' voice behavior facets (promotive and prohibitive). The study tests hypotheses about the processing mechanism (moral identity) and the boundary condition (proactive personality) to understand these relationships.

The study collected time-lagged survey data through an online structured questionnaire from 182 respondents. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was used to ensure the validity and reliability of the data. Moreover, structural equation modeling was run to test the hypotheses using AMOS.

Ethical leadership positively affects followers' promotive and prohibitive voice behavior via the psychological mechanism of moral identity. Proactive personality moderates the moral identity – promotive and moral identity – prohibitive voice relationships, such that these relations are stronger when the individuals are high on proactive personality.

Robust evidence of a genuine cause-and-effect relationship may not be yielded owing to cross-sectional and self-reported data at the follower level of analysis. Future researchers can use dyadic, longitudinal and experimental designs to overcome these limitations. Organizations targeting to increase voice behavior can benefit from maintaining ethical leaders and proactive followers at the workplace.

The study significantly contributes to the ethical leadership and voice behavior literature. Ethical leadership enhances followers' promotive/prohibitive voice behaviors through their moral identity enhancement. The paper also confirmed that a proactive personality is a critical boundary condition in these relationships. Empirical evidence from the Eastern context has been added, and research directions have also been provided.

Some of the best information for preventing accounting violations is received from employees who have observed the unethical behavior (Henning, 2016). However, receiving information about accounting violations or other unethical behavior in organizations requires employees to voluntarily report the behavior. Employees may be particularly hesitant to report unethical behavior when the behavior benefits them. Employees may also justify their own unethical behavior as morally appropriate when their moral identity allows the behavior. The authors draw on psychology and ethics literature to examine the relationships among moral identity, moral disengagement, and unethical behavior. In the exploration of behavior, the authors examine both commissions and omissions. While unethical commissions are violations directly committed by an individual without cooperation from others, unethical omissions are violations resulting from an individual failing to take steps necessary to correct another's unethical behavior.

The authors conduct a survey about cheating with a sample of college students. Using structural equation modeling, the authors find that intentions to engage in unethical commissions are positively associated with moral disengagement, while unethical omissions do not appear to create the moral disengagement that can arise from cognitive dissonance. The authors also find a feedback loop from moral disengagement to future intentions, which suggests moral disengagement created from one unethical act increases intentions for future unethical behavior. Finally, the authors find a simple intervention that can help to increase the moral intensity of observed unethical behavior.

The purpose of this study is to explore how and when ethical leadership enhances bootlegging. To achieve this purpose, the authors proposed a moderated dual-path model in this study.

The model was tested on two related studies. Study 1 was based on three-wave, collected data from a sample of 511 employees of Chinese companies. Data used in Study 2 was collected by survey from employees and their direct leaders of multiple departments of companies in China.

In Study 1, the authors found that moral efficacy and moral identity mediate between ethical leadership and bootlegging. Findings from Study 2 provide convergent support of moral efficacy’s and moral identity’s impact on the mediation relationship between ethical leadership and bootlegging. Moreover, the results of Study 2 further reveal that the relationship between ethical leadership and moral efficacy (or moral identity) was more significant among leader–follower with different genders.

This study not only enriches the literature on ethical leadership and gender (dis)similarity, but also helps managers to better understand the function of bootlegging.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate and measure employees' perception of actual and desired corporate ethical values as a component of corporate identity within a major UK financial institution, against a comparison with their employees' own individual ethical values.

The multi‐method case study uses a mix of secondary data analysis, key interviews and 245 employee questionnaires. The financial institution is selected as it is identified as being in the process of instigating what may be termed a “monolithic” corporate branding strategy while using a “top down” communication approach across its various operations in the UK.

The paper shows that employees' perceive managements' ideal identity to be significantly different to the operational reality that “is” the company, especially in relation to ethical values. These gaps also vary between major divisions within the organisation, as well as between differing staffing levels, adding empirical support to existing theories that corporate identity and corporate brand management will need to take into account many sub‐cultures within any large organisation, as well as the individual values of its employees, and that a top down communication programme that fails to take this into consideration will face many difficulties.

This empirical based case study research focuses upon a comparison between internal perceptions of actual and ideal corporate values as part of the corporate identity, in comparison to employees' own individual values has been largely overlooked within the corporate identity and branding literatures to date.

We develop a multilevel model of emotional processes grounded in social identity theory to explore the role of emotion in transformational leadership.

This work is conceptual in nature and develops theory surrounding emotion in organizations by integrating theories on transformational leadership, emotion management, and organizational identity.

Transformational leaders utilize interpersonal emotion management strategies to influence and respond to emotions arising from the self-evaluative processes of organizational members during times of organizational identity change.

The conceptual model detailed provides insight on the intersubjective emotional processes grounded in social identity that influence transformational leadership. Future research into transformational leadership behaviors will benefit from a multilevel perspective which includes both interpersonal emotion management and intrapersonal emotion generation related to social identity at both the within-person and between-person levels.

The proposed model expands on the role of emotions in transformational leadership by theoretically linking the specific transformational behaviors to discrete emotions displayed by followers. While previous empirical research has indicated the positive outcomes of transformational leadership and the role of emotion recognition, work has yet to be presented which explicates the role of discrete emotions in the transformational leadership process.