School of Business Administration, Hunan U., China
Research has shown that leaders play a vital role in either encouraging or discouraging individuals’ unethical behavior in organizations. Ethical leadership, or leader behaviors that promote and reinforce moral standards, has been consistently linked to lower unethical behavior. Yet, employees may also be enticed or pressured by their peers to act unethically. The literature lacks theory and evidence concerning how employees respond to social information from both sources which may present a mixed message when peers and leaders behave incongruently. We assess the interaction between ethical leadership and perceived unethical behavior of peers in predicting individuals’ unethical behavior. Two studies provided converging evidence that perceiving coworkers engaging in higher levels of unethical behavior strengthened the negative effect of ethical leadership on individuals’ unethical behavior. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications for leadership and the support of ethical norms.
