The Mediating Effects of Managerial Skills on the Relationship Between Managerial Values,Ethical Leadership,and Organizational Reputation

Drawing on the upper echelons theory, this study examines the mediating effects of managerial skills on the relationship between managerial values, ethical leadership, and organizational reputation. Data were obtained from 209 manufacturing companies in the People’s Republic of China. Regression results reveal that (1) managerial values positively affect ethical leadership and organizational reputation and (2) managerial skills mediate the effects of managerial values on ethical leadership, and on organizational reputation. The study sheds light on the mechanisms through which managerial self-transcendence values but not self-enhancement values affect ethical leadership and organizational reputation.     

Organizational Culture in the Financial Sector: Evidence from a Cross-Industry Analysis of Employee Personal Values and Career Success

We assess the organizational culture in the finance industry in relation to the global financial crisis and consider the potential of cultural change to improve the financial sector. To avoid (response) biases, we build on the person–organization fit literature and develop a novel, indirect method for assessing organizational culture that revolves around relationships between employees’ personal traits and their career success in the industry or organization under study. We analyze personal values concerning the pursuit of private gain (self-enhancement values) versus personal values concerning caring for others (self-transcendence values) and consider whether employees that value self-enhancement more and self-transcendence less enjoy more career success relative to their peers when working in finance than when working in other industries. Results do not reveal any sort of cross-industry differences that would implicate the finance industry’s culture in the financial crisis. Instead, we find the opposite, namely that strong self-enhancement values and weak self-transcendence values go together with less career success in the finance industry compared to other industries. Hence, if anything, the culture in the finance industry does not seem to resonate well with professionals that seek to pursue personal gain at the expense of clients’ welfare. Implication is that cultural change has little potential to improve the financial system. Meanwhile, the method for assessing organizational culture indirectly by analyzing relationships between employees’ traits and their career outcomes has wider applicability, particularly when relying on scores or measures obtained directly from the people concerned is likely to render biased evidence.     

Value instantiation: how to overcome the value conflict in promoting luxury brands with CSR initiatives

Marketing Letters - When luxury brands (exuding self-enhancement values) incorporate CSR (eliciting self-transcendence values) in their brand platform, they are blending opposing values into their...     

领导排斥对员工亲组织非伦理行为的影响：自我提升动机的中介作用

基于自我提升理论，从自我提升动机和马基雅维利主义视角出发，探讨了领导排斥对员工亲组织非伦理行为的作用机制。通过对两阶段收集的451份问卷进行数据分析，结果发现：领导排斥对员工亲组织非伦理行为具有显著正向影响；员工自我提升动机在领导排斥与员工亲组织非伦理行为关系中起中介作用；员工马基雅维利主义调节了其自我提升动机与亲组织非伦理行为间的关系，即员工马基雅维利主义水平越高，其自我提升动机对亲组织非伦理行为的正向影响越强；员工马基雅维利主义正向调节员工自我提升动机在领导排斥与亲组织非伦理行为间的中介作用，即员工马基雅维利主义水平越高，其自我提升动机的中介作用越强。研究结论不仅拓展了领导排斥理论的研究，也为管理者正确认识领导排斥、管理员工遭受领导排斥后的认知与行为提供了新思路。     

Ingratiating with Despotic Leaders to Gain Status: The Role of Power Distance Orientation and Self-enhancement Motive

This study adds to business ethics research by investigating how employees’ exposure to despotic leadership might influence their peer-rated workplace status, along with a mediating role of ingratiatory behavior targeted at supervisors and a moderating role of their power distance orientation and self-enhancement motive. Multisource, three-wave data from employees and their peers in Pakistani organizations reveal that exposure to despotic leaders spurs employees’ upward ingratiatory behavior, and this behavior in turn can help them attain higher status in the organization. The mediating role of upward ingratiatory behavior also is more prominent among employees with higher levels of power distance orientation and self-enhancement motive. For business ethics scholars, this study thus pinpoints a potentially dangerous pathway—featuring employees’ deliberate efforts to impress self-centered, destructive supervisors—by which despotic leadership can generate beneficial outcomes for employees but not for the organization, as well as how this process varies due to key personal characteristics.

     

What is Ethical Competence? The Role of Empathy,Personal Values,and the Five-Factor Model of Personality in Ethical Decision-Making

The objective of the present research was two-fold: (1) to provide a new definition of ethical competence, and (2) to clarify the influence of empathy, personal values, and the five-factor model of personality on ethical competence. The present research provides a comprehensive overview about recent approaches and empirically explores the interconnections of these constructs. 366 German undergraduate students were examined in a cross-sectional study that investigated the relationship of empathy, personal values, and the five-factor model of personality with moral judgment competence and counterproductive work behavior as indicators of moral judgment and behavior. We found self-transcendence values to be related to both, high levels of empathy and ethical competence, in contrast to self-enhancement values. Multiple mediation analysis revealed unique effects of empathy on ethical competence through values as mediators. Affective (but not cognitive) empathy transmitted its effect on ethical competence through benevolence, conformity, tradition, power, and hedonism. Most importantly, perspective taking lost its predictive power when investigated alongside affective empathy dimensions. These results converge to an important role of affective empathy, in particular empathic concern, with regard to personal values and ethical competence. Furthermore, the five-factor model of personality explained variance in measures of ethical competence. Our research suggests that organizational decision makers should consider the role of empathy, personal values, and the five-factor model in their human resource management in order to select employees with high ethical competence.     

包容型领导如何影响员工挑战型组织公民行为？基于信任的多重中介效应模型研究

基于资源保存理论,文章采用配对追踪多来源问卷调查法探讨了员工认知信任、情感信任及其互动在包容型领导与挑战型组织公民行为关系中的中介作用及其效应。跨层次模型数据分析结果表明：包容型领导可以有效预测员工的挑战型组织公民行为;包容型领导可以直接通过情感信任间接影响员工的挑战型组织公民行为,情感信任在这个过程中起着完全中介作用;包容型领导行为还可以通过认知信任和情感信任间接影响员工的挑战型组织公民行为,即员工的认知信任要通过情感信任才能发挥影响员工挑战型组织公民行为的间接作用。     

Do Anglo countries still form a values cluster? Evidence of the complexity of value change

To what extent does the Anglo Cluster remains a cultural cluster in today's managerial and professional workforce? Across six Anglo countries (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, U.K., and U.S.), we found significant differences in values orientations (openness to change, conservation, self-enhancement, and self-transcendence values) that challenge the concept of a cohesive Anglo cluster. We also explored the influence of micro-level factors on values orientations and found consistent life-stage and gender differences across countries. We conclude that, even within a group of countries perceived as similar, multi-level analyses are needed to fully capture the essence of values differences across and within countries.     

Bad Apples,Bad Barrels,and Broken Followers? An Empirical Examination of Contextual Influences on Follower Perceptions and Reactions to Aversive Leadership

Research on destructive leadership has largely focused on leader characteristics thought to be responsible for harmful organizational outcomes. Recent findings, however, demonstrate the need to examine important contextual factors underlying such processes. Thus, the present study sought to determine the effects of an organization’s climate and financial performance, as well as the leader’s gender, on subordinate perceptions of and reactions (i.e., whistle-blowing intentions) to aversive leadership, a form of destructive leadership based on coercive power. 302 undergraduate participants read through a series of vignettes describing a fictional organization, its employees, and an aversive leader in charge of the company’s sales department. They were then asked to envision themselves as subordinates of the leader and respond to several quantitative measures and open-ended questions. Consistent with Padilla and colleagues' (2007) toxic triangle theory, results suggest that both perceptions and reactions to aversive leadership depend on the three aforementioned factors. Specifically, aversive leaders were perceived more aversively and elicited greater whistle-blowing intentions in financially unstable organizations possessing climates intolerant of negative leader behavior. Moreover, female aversive leaders were perceived more aversively than their male counterparts under such conditions. Theoretical and practical implications as well as future research directions are also discussed.     

Leaders as Moral Role Models: The Case of John Gutfreund at Salomon Brothers

The paper describes and discusses unethical behavior in organizations, as a result of (interacting) disputable leadership and ethical climate. This paper presents and analyzes the well-known bond trading scandal at Salomon Brother to demonstrate the development of an unethical organizational culture under the leadership of John Gutfreund. The paper argues that leaders shape and reinforce an ethical or unethical organizational climate by what they pay attention to, how they react to crises, how they behave, how they allocate rewards, and how they hire and fire individuals.     

Business leaders’ personal values,organisational culture and market orientation

In a world where competitive advantages based on technology, physical assets and large advertising budgets are fungible, business leaders’ personal values as an alternative or complementary influence on decision-making and market orientation have an intuitive appeal. Research findings based on data collected from 370 business leaders of independent indigenous companies in China suggest that business leaders with different sets of personal values create and develop different types of organisational culture. Leaders with openness to change values form an adhocracy culture, while leaders expressing conservation values promote a hierarchy culture. Different organisational cultures have different influences on market orientation. The hypothesised relationships between self-enhancement leaders and market culture and between self-transcendence leaders and clan culture were not supported. Finally, the article discusses the theoretical contribution of the study, managerial implications and suggestions for future research.     

Transformational leadership and job performance: A social identity perspective

Drawing on social identity theory, this study provides a model explaining the underlying process through which transformational leadership influences creative behavior and organizational citizenship behaviors. Individual differentiation and group identification are proposed as social identity mechanisms reflecting the characteristics of personal and collective identity orientations that underpin the differential effects of transformational leadership behaviors on performance outcomes. The model is tested with data from a sample of 250 front-line employees and their immediate managers working in five banks in the People's Republic of China. Results of hierarchical linear modeling provide support for the model whereby group-focused and individual-focused transformational leadership behaviors exert differential impacts on individual differentiation and group identification. Furthermore, individual differentiation mediates the relationship between individual-focused transformational leadership and creative behavior, whereas group identification mediates the relationships between group-focused transformational leadership and OCBs toward individuals and groups. Implications for theory and practice are discussed and future research directions are outlined.     

变革型领导如何影响员工亲组织非伦理行为?——一个被调节的中介作用模型

本文从社会认同理论的视角,对变革型领导与亲组织非伦理行为之间的关系进行考察,并且构建一个被调节的中介模型.研究选取浙江省3家企业的300名员工作为研究对象,探讨了在组织领导化身调节下,变革型领导与亲组织非伦理行为的关系,以及组织认同的中介作用.研究结果表明:变革型领导对亲组织非伦理行为具有积极的预测效应;组织认同在变革型领导与亲组织非伦理行为之间起部分中介作用;领导组织化身在变革型领导和组织认同之间起调节作用.     

When Leadership Goes Unnoticed: The Moderating Role of Follower Self-Esteem on the Relationship Between Ethical Leadership and Follower Behavior

The authors examined the effects of ethical leadership on follower organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and deviant behavior. Drawing upon research related to the behavioral plasticity hypothesis, the authors examined a moderating role of follower self- esteem in these relationships. Results from a field study revealed that ethical leadership is positively related to follower OCB and negatively related to deviance. We found that these relationships are moderated by followers’ self-esteem, such that the relationships between ethical leadership and OCB as well as between ethical leadership and deviant behavior are weaker when followers’ self-esteem is high than low. Implications of these findings for research and practice are discussed.     

An Empirical Study of Leader Ethical Values,Transformational and Transactional Leadership,and Follower Attitudes Toward Corporate Social Responsibility

Several leadership and ethics scholars suggest that the transformational leadership process is predicated on a divergent set of ethical values compared to transactional leadership. Theoretical accounts declare that deontological ethics should be associated with transformational leadership while transactional leadership is likely related to teleological ethics. However, very little empirical research supports these claims. Furthermore, despite calls for increasing attention as to how leaders influence their followers’ perceptions of the importance of ethics and corporate social responsibility (CSR) for organizational effectiveness, no empirical study to date has assessed the comparative impact of transformational and transactional leadership styles on follower CSR attitudes. Data from 122 organizational leaders and 458 of their followers indicated that leader deontological ethical values (altruism, universal rights, Kantian principles, etc.) were strongly associated with follower ratings of transformational leadership, while leader teleological ethical values (utilitarianism) were related to follower ratings of transactional leadership. As predicted, only transformational leadership was associated with follower beliefs in the stakeholder view of CSR. Implications for the study and practice of ethical leadership, future research directions, and management education are discussed.     

包容型领导对员工创新行为的影响：基于组织和谐的中介作用及组织创新氛围的调节作用

员工创新行为是组织塑造竞争优势的重要环节。尽管已有研究表明领导风格能够对员工创新行为产生显著影响,但目前对于二者之间的作用机制和边界条件却知之甚少。文章基于国内新能源行业422名在职人员的有效调查问卷数据,构建并检验一个被调节的中介效应模型。实证研究结果表明：包容型领导对员工创新行为具有显著正向影响;组织和谐能够在包容型领导与员工创新行为关系中起中介作用;组织创新氛围在包容型领导和组织和谐之间起着正向的调节作用,组织创新氛围越强,包容型领导对组织和谐的影响程度随之增强。文章解释了包容型领导对员工创新行为的作用机理,不仅打开了二者之间的“黑箱”,也为员工在组织中如何有效增强创新行为提供了管理启示和对策建议。     

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

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.     

Rebounding from Corruption: Perceptions of Ethics Program Effectiveness in a Public Sector Organization

We examine the perceived importance of three organizational preconditions (awareness of formal ethics codes, decision-making techniques, and availability of resources) theorized to be critical for ethics program effectiveness. In addition, we examine the importance of ethical leadership and congruence between formal ethics codes and informal ethical norms in influencing employee perceptions. Participants (n=418) from a large southern California government agency completed a survey on the perceived effectiveness of the organization’s ethics program. Results suggest that employee perceptions of organizational preconditions, ethical leadership and informal ethical norms were related to perceptions of ethics program effectiveness. Based on these findings, organizations should evaluate the presence (or absence) of essential preconditions and take steps to ensure that leaders model espoused organizational values to foster perceptions of effective ethics programs.Kathie L. Pelletier is a doctoral student in the School of Behavioral and Organizational Sciences at Claremont Graduate University, 123 East Eighth Street, Claremont, CA 91711; e-mail: kathie.pelletier@cgu.edu. Her research interests include organizational ethics, ethical leadership, and women’s issues in the workplace. Michelle C. Bligh is an assistant professor of Organizational Behavior in the School of Behavioral and Organizational Sciences at Claremont Graduate University, 123 East Eighth Street, Claremont, CA 91711; e-mail: michelle. bligh@cgu.edu. Her research interests include charismatic leadership, political and executive leadership, and organizational culture.     

Sticks and Stones may Break Your Bones, but Words can Break Your Spirit: Bullying in the Workplace

Workplace bullying has a well-established body of research internationally, but the United States has lagged behind the rest of the world in the identification and investigation of this phenomenon. This paper presents a managerial perspective on bullying in organizations. The lack of attention to the concept of workplace dignity in American organizational structures has supported and even encouraged both casual and more severe forms of harassment that our workplace laws do not currently cover. The demoralization victims suffer can create toxic working environments and impair organizational productivity. Some methods of protecting your organization from this blight of bullying are proposed. Bullying has always been part of the human condition; history is rife with references to abuse of power and unnecessary or excessive force. The classic bully story is of Joseph and his brothers, a tale of envy and hostility. The refinement of bullying to include various forms of legally defined social harassment is a relatively late phenomenon, however, dating to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In the United States, bullying is not illegal, whereas it is illegal in many other countries. Bullying is not about benign teasing, nor does it include the off-color jokes, racial slurs, or unwelcome advances that are the hallmarks of legally defined harassment. Workplace bullying is the pattern of destructive and generally deliberate demeaning of co-workers or subordinates that reminds us of the activities of the schoolyard bully. Unlike the schoolyard bully, however, the workplace bully is an adult, usually (but not always) aware of the impact of his or her behavior on others. Bullying in the workplace, often tacitly accepted by the organizational leadership, can create an environment of psychological threat that diminishes corporate productivity and inhibits individual and group commitment. The two examples that follow will help to clarify the difference between harassment and bullying.     

Transformational Leadership and Follower’s Unethical Behavior for the Benefit of the Company: A Two-Study Investigation

Although the ethical dimension of transformational leadership has frequently been discussed over the last years, there is little empirical research on employees’ ethical behavior as an outcome of transformational leadership. This two-study investigation examined the relationship between transformational leadership and unethical yet pro-organizational follower behavior (UPB). Moreover, mediating and moderating processes were addressed. Our research yielded a positive relationship between transformational leadership and employees’ willingness to engage in UPB. Furthermore, both studies showed employees’ organizational identification to function as a mediating mechanism and employees’ personal disposition toward ethical/unethical behavior to moderate the relationship between organizational identification and willingness to engage in UPB. Altogether, results indicate transformational leadership to entail a certain risk of encouraging followers to contribute to their company’s success in ways that are generally considered to be unethical. Implications regarding the ethical dimension of transformational leadership are discussed.