The Relationship Between Ethical Leadership and Unethical Pro-Organizational Behavior: Linear or Curvilinear Effects?

By Qing Miao, Alexander Newman, Jia Yu, Lin Xu. Journal of Business Ethics, 2012

297 citations recorded by the source corpus.

In this study, we examine the nature of the relationship between ethical leadership and unethical pro-organizational behavior (UPB), defined as unethical behavior conducted by employees with the aim of benefiting their organization, and whether the strength of the relationship differs between subordinates experiencing high and low identification with supervisor. Based on three-wave survey data obtained from 239 public sector employees in China, we find that ethical leadership has an inverted u-shaped (curvilinear) relationship with UPB. As the level of ethical leadership increases from low to moderate, UPB increases; as the level of ethical leadership increases from moderate to high, UPB decreases. Further, we find that the strength of this inverted u-curve relationship differs between subordinates with high and low identification with supervisor. That is to say, the inverted u-shaped relationship between ethical leadership and UPB was stronger when subordinates experienced high levels of identification with supervisor. The theoretical and managerial implications of our findings for understanding how to manage UPB in an organizational context are discussed.

Subfields: Demography, Information Systems and Management, Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/7eb9d427748ff878e4f97f04bc2142b060ad2b67

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Citations in the corpus

Prosocial Citizens Without a Moral Compass? Examining the Relationship Between Machiavellianism and Unethical Pro-Organizational Behavior (2018, background): “As such, we contribute to a growing body of research suggesting that unethical intentions or behavior may, at times, be pro-organizational in nature (Belschak et al. 2015; Effelsberg et al. 2014; Miao et al. 2013; Umphress and Bingham 2011; Umphress et al. 2010).”
Investigating When and Why Psychological Entitlement Predicts Unethical Pro-organizational Behavior (2019, background): “…to date has largely focused on the examination of situational and attitudinal antecedents of UPB such as leadership (e.g., Effelsberg et al. 2014; Miao et al. 2013), Unethical Pro-Organizational Behavior and Psychological Entitlement 3 affective commitment, and organizational identification…”
Egoistic norms, organizational identification, and the perceived ethicality of unethical pro-organizational behavior: A moral maturation perspective (2020, background): “, 2018), as well as leaders’ (Effelsberg et al., 2014; Graham et al., 2015; Miao et al., 2013) and coworkers’ behavior (Thau et al.”
An Identity Perspective on Ethical Leadership to Explain Organizational Citizenship Behavior: The Interplay of Follower Moral Identity and Leader Group Prototypicality (2019, background): “…deter employees 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…”
Ethical Leadership and Internal Whistleblowing: A Mediated Moderation Model (2017, background): “For example, Miao et al. (2013) found that the relationship between ethical leadership and unethical, pro-organizational behavior is curvilinear (an inverted-u-shaped relationship), but not linear.”