Follower moral anger expression to the leader, while commonly employed in practice as a means to curb unethical behavior in the workplace, remains an under-investigated topic in academic literature. To elucidate whether such behavior can effectively enhance follower promotability and deter leader unethical behavior, we shift the focus of existing anger expression research from a leader-centric to a follower-centric perspective. Employing the EASI model, we posit that follower moral anger expression inhibits their promotability and augments leader unethical behavior through leader anger, while it can also conversely foster follower promotability and mitigate leader unethical unethical behavior through leader moral reflectiveness. Additionally, leader narcissism emerges as a critical boundary condition, exacerbating the influence of follower moral anger on leader anger while diminishing its impact on moral reflectiveness. Our pre-registered two-wave, muti-source survey study containing 181 leader-follower dyads supported most of our hypotheses. Finally, we discuss our theoretical contributions to anger expression, leader narcissism, and moral reflectiveness literature.
