Ethical leadership, moral equity judgments, and discretionary workplace behavior

By Christian J Resick, M. Hargis, Ping Shao, Scott B. Dust. 2013

156 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The current study examines the role of ethical cognition as a psychological mechanism linking ethical leadership to employee engagement in specific discretionary workplace behaviors. Hypotheses are developed proposing that ethical leadership is associated with employees’ negative moral equity judgments of workplace deviance (a discretionary antisocial behavior) and positive moral equity judgments of organizational citizenship (a discretionary prosocial behavior). In addition, hypotheses propose that moral equity judgments are a key type of ethical cognition linking ethical leadership with employee behaviors. Hypotheses are tested in a cross-organizational sample of 190 supervisor–employee dyads. Results indicate that employees who work for ethical leaders tended to judge acts of workplace deviance as morally inequitable and acts of organizational citizenship as morally equitable. In turn, these judgments guided employee regulation of behavior, and mediated the relationships between ethical leadership and employee avoidance of antisocial conduct and engagement in prosocial behavior.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Information Systems and Management, Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/53e8e28ca1caa3cd66b95d1535ec442909f2394f

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In Cognitive Neuroscience

In Information Systems and Management

In Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management

Citations in the corpus

Linking Ethical Leadership to Employees’ Organizational Citizenship Behavior: Testing the Multilevel Mediation Role of Organizational Concern (2015, background): “With a sample of 190 supervisor-employee dyads, Resick et al. (2013) study indicated that employees tend to judge the managerial processes as morally fair when they are under the supervision of an ethical leader.”
Does Public Service Motivation Mediate the Relationship between Goal Clarity and both Organizational Commitment and Extra-Role Behaviours? (2016, background): “It is worth noting that utilizing a survey panel is common in organizational research (Anderson and Kjeldsen 2013; Byrne et al. 2014; Piccolo and Colquitt 2006; Resick et al. 2013; Zhu et al. 2011).”
Toward a Better Understanding of the Relationship Between Transformational Leadership, Public Service Motivation, Mission Valence, and Employee Performance (2014, methodology): “Expectancy theory was introduced by Vroom (1964). It posits that a worker’s motivation is dependent on how much they desire a reward (valence), their perception that greater effort will lead to expected performance (expectancy), and their perception that higher performance will lead to a reward (ins”
When Do Ethical Leaders Become Less Effective? The Moderating Role of Perceived Leader Ethical Conviction on Employee Discretionary Reactions to Ethical Leadership (2019, background): “These outcomes are important because they are discretionary behaviors under individuals’ control through which employees respond to ethical leadership (Resick et al. 2013) and contribute to or restrain organizational functioning (Berry et al. 2012; Organ et al. 2006).”
Egoistic norms, organizational identification, and the perceived ethicality of unethical pro-organizational behavior: A moral maturation perspective (2020, methodology): “Moral equity judgments have been linked to ethics-related intentions and behavior (Resick et al., 2013; Rottig et al., 2011).”
An Identity Perspective on Ethical Leadership to Explain Organizational Citizenship Behavior: The Interplay of Follower Moral Identity and Leader Group Prototypicality (2019, background): “…from negative moral behavior, such as discretionary workplace behavior, workplace incivility, or organizational deviance (e.g., Miao et al. 2012; Resick et al. 2013; Taylor and Pattie 2014; van Gils et al. 2015a, b) but can also inspire positive employees’ behavior, such as OCB (Avey et al.…”