Abandoning good and following evil: a study on the dark side effect of self-sacrificial leadership—from the perspective of moral licensing
International Journal of Conflict Management
ISSN: 1044-4068
Article publication date: 30 April 2024
Abstract
Purpose
Based on the moral licensing theory, this study aims to reveal the mechanism of self-sacrificial leadership inducing abusive supervision from two paths of leader moral credit and leader moral credential. At the same time, it also discusses the moderating effect of leader behavioral integrity on the two paths.
Design/methodology/approach
In this study, 434 employees and their direct leaders from six Chinese companies were investigated in a paired survey at three time points, and the empirical data was analyzed using Mplus 7.4 software.
Findings
Self-sacrificial leadership has a positive effect on leader abusive supervision through the mediating role of leader moral credit and leader moral credential. In addition, this study also finds that leader behavioral integrity is the “gate” for self-sacrificial leadership to promote abusive supervision, and the leader behavioral integrity has a moderating effect on the process of self-sacrificial leadership influencing on leader moral credit and leader moral credential.
Originality/value
This study explores the evolution of self-sacrificial leadership from “good” to “bad” from the perspective of moral licensing and broadens the research on the mechanism and boundary conditions of self-sacrificial leadership. At the same time, it also provides important reference value for preventing the negative effects of self-sacrificial leadership in organizations.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
Ethical statement: The authors certify that this manuscript is original and has not been published and will not be submitted elsewhere for publication while being considered by International Journal of Conflict Management. And the study is not split up into several parts to increase the quantity of submissions and submitted to various journals or to one journal over time. No data have been fabricated or manipulated (including images) to support conclusions. No data, text or theories by others are presented as if they were the authors’ own. The submission has been received explicitly from all co-authors.
Informed consent: All authors declare that they have no conflict of interest. All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. This article does not contain any studies with animals performed by any of the authors. Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.
Conflict of interest statement: The authors declare that they have no financial and personal relationships with other people or organizations that can inappropriately influence their work, and there is no professional or other personal interest of any nature or kind in any product, service and/or company that could be construed as influencing the position presented in or the review of the manuscript entitled.
Citation
Chen, H., Bao, J., Wang, J. and Wang, L. (2024), "Abandoning good and following evil: a study on the dark side effect of self-sacrificial leadership—from the perspective of moral licensing", International Journal of Conflict Management, Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJCMA-11-2023-0228
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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