IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/jbuset/v133y2016i2d10.1007_s10551-014-2369-3.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Internalized Moral Identity in Ethical Leadership

Author

Listed:
  • Rebekka Skubinn

    (Leibniz University Hannover)

  • Lisa Herzog

    (Goethe University Frankfurt)

Abstract

The relevance of leader ethicality has motivated ethical leadership theory. In this paper, we emphasize the importance of moral identity for the concept of ethical leadership. We relate ethical leadership incorporating an internalized moral identity to productive deviant workplace behavior. Using qualitative empirical data we illustrate the relevance of critical situations, i.e., situations in which hypernorms and organizational norms diverge, for the distinction of ethical leaders with or without internalized moral identities. Our paper takes a multidisciplinary approach integrating insight from management as well as humanities and social sciences toward a comprehensive sense of ethical leadership.

Suggested Citation

  • Rebekka Skubinn & Lisa Herzog, 2016. "Internalized Moral Identity in Ethical Leadership," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 133(2), pages 249-260, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:jbuset:v:133:y:2016:i:2:d:10.1007_s10551-014-2369-3
    DOI: 10.1007/s10551-014-2369-3
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10551-014-2369-3
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10551-014-2369-3?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. James Avey & Michael Palanski & Fred Walumbwa, 2011. "When Leadership Goes Unnoticed: The Moderating Role of Follower Self-Esteem on the Relationship Between Ethical Leadership and Follower Behavior," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 98(4), pages 573-582, February.
    2. Shao, Ruodan & Aquino, Karl & Freeman, Dan, 2008. "Beyond Moral Reasoning: A Review of Moral Identity Research and Its Implications for Business Ethics," Business Ethics Quarterly, Cambridge University Press, vol. 18(4), pages 513-540, October.
    3. Deanne Hartog & Frank Belschak, 2012. "Work Engagement and Machiavellianism in the Ethical Leadership Process," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 107(1), pages 35-47, April.
    4. Barbara Arel & Cathy Beaudoin & Anna Cianci, 2012. "The Impact of Ethical Leadership, the Internal Audit Function, and Moral Intensity on a Financial Reporting Decision," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 109(3), pages 351-366, September.
    5. Mayer, David M. & Kuenzi, Maribeth & Greenbaum, Rebecca & Bardes, Mary & Salvador, Rommel (Bombie), 2009. "How low does ethical leadership flow? Test of a trickle-down model," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 108(1), pages 1-13, January.
    6. Rubin, Robert S. & Dierdorff, Erich C. & Brown, Michael E., 2010. "Do Ethical Leaders Get Ahead? Exploring Ethical Leadership and Promotability," Business Ethics Quarterly, Cambridge University Press, vol. 20(2), pages 215-236, April.
    7. James Avey & Tara Wernsing & Michael Palanski, 2012. "Exploring the Process of Ethical Leadership: The Mediating Role of Employee Voice and Psychological Ownership," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 107(1), pages 21-34, April.
    8. Brown, Michael E. & Trevino, Linda K. & Harrison, David A., 2005. "Ethical leadership: A social learning perspective for construct development and testing," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 97(2), pages 117-134, July.
    9. Brown, Michael E. & Mitchell, Marie S., 2010. "Ethical and Unethical Leadership: Exploring New Avenues for Future Research," Business Ethics Quarterly, Cambridge University Press, vol. 20(4), pages 583-616, October.
    10. Neubert, Mitchell J. & Wu, Cindy & Roberts, James A., 2013. "The Influence of Ethical Leadership and Regulatory Focus on Employee Outcomes," Business Ethics Quarterly, Cambridge University Press, vol. 23(2), pages 269-296, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Mari Huhtala & Päivi Fadjukoff & Jane Kroger, 2021. "Managers as Moral Leaders: Moral Identity Processes in the Context of Work," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 172(4), pages 639-652, September.
    2. Hongyu Zhang & Xin Lucy Liu & Yahua Cai & Xiuli Sun, 2023. "Paved with Good Intentions: Self-regulation Breakdown After Altruistic Ethical Transgression," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 186(2), pages 385-405, August.
    3. Guangxi Zhang & Jianan Zhong & Muammer Ozer, 2020. "Status Threat and Ethical Leadership: A Power-Dependence Perspective," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 161(3), pages 665-685, January.
    4. Salar Mesdaghinia & Debra L. Shapiro & Robert Eisenberger, 2022. "Prohibitive Voice as a Moral Act: The Role of Moral Identity, Leaders, and Workgroups," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 180(1), pages 297-311, September.
    5. Fabiola H. Gerpott & Niels Van Quaquebeke & Sofia Schlamp & Sven C. Voelpel, 2019. "An Identity Perspective on Ethical Leadership to Explain Organizational Citizenship Behavior: The Interplay of Follower Moral Identity and Leader Group Prototypicality," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 156(4), pages 1063-1078, June.
    6. Shuwen Li & Ruiqian Jia & Juergen H. Seufert & Jinlian Luo & Rui Sun, 2023. "You may not reap what you sow: How and when ethical leadership promotes subordinates’ online helping behavior," Asia Pacific Journal of Management, Springer, vol. 40(4), pages 1683-1702, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Akanksha Bedi & Can M. Alpaslan & Sandy Green, 2016. "A Meta-analytic Review of Ethical Leadership Outcomes and Moderators," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 139(3), pages 517-536, December.
    2. Muel Kaptein, 2019. "The Moral Entrepreneur: A New Component of Ethical Leadership," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 156(4), pages 1135-1150, June.
    3. Julena M. Bonner & Rebecca L. Greenbaum & David M. Mayer, 2016. "My Boss is Morally Disengaged: The Role of Ethical Leadership in Explaining the Interactive Effect of Supervisor and Employee Moral Disengagement on Employee Behaviors," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 137(4), pages 731-742, September.
    4. Colina Frisch & Markus Huppenbauer, 2014. "New Insights into Ethical Leadership: A Qualitative Investigation of the Experiences of Executive Ethical Leaders," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 123(1), pages 23-43, August.
    5. Pedro Neves & Joana Story, 2015. "Ethical Leadership and Reputation: Combined Indirect Effects on Organizational Deviance," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 127(1), pages 165-176, March.
    6. Guangxi Zhang & Jianan Zhong & Muammer Ozer, 2020. "Status Threat and Ethical Leadership: A Power-Dependence Perspective," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 161(3), pages 665-685, January.
    7. Fabiola H. Gerpott & Niels Van Quaquebeke & Sofia Schlamp & Sven C. Voelpel, 2019. "An Identity Perspective on Ethical Leadership to Explain Organizational Citizenship Behavior: The Interplay of Follower Moral Identity and Leader Group Prototypicality," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 156(4), pages 1063-1078, June.
    8. DeConinck, James B., 2015. "Outcomes of ethical leadership among salespeople," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 68(5), pages 1086-1093.
    9. Yidong Tu & Xinxin Lu & Yue Yu, 2017. "Supervisors’ Ethical Leadership and Employee Job Satisfaction: A Social Cognitive Perspective," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 18(1), pages 229-245, February.
    10. Tran Quang Bao Phuc & Khalida Parveen & Duyen Thi Truc Tran & Dao Thi Anh Nguyen, 2021. "The linkage between ethical leadership and lecturer job satisfaction at a private higher education institution in Vietnam," Journal of Social Sciences Advancement, Science Impact Publishers, vol. 2(2), pages 39-50.
    11. Samuel Hunter, 2012. "(Un)Ethical Leadership and Identity: What Did We Learn and Where Do We Go from Here?," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 107(1), pages 79-87, April.
    12. Shenjiang Mo & Junqi Shi, 2017. "Linking Ethical Leadership to Employee Burnout, Workplace Deviance and Performance: Testing the Mediating Roles of Trust in Leader and Surface Acting," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 144(2), pages 293-303, August.
    13. Nida Kamal & Hina Samdani & Amna Yameen, 2018. "Engaging Employees through Ethical Leadership," Global Social Sciences Review, Humanity Only, vol. 3(3), pages 300-316, September.
    14. Niels Van Quaquebeke & Jan U. Becker & Niko Goretzki & Christian Barrot, 2019. "Perceived Ethical Leadership Affects Customer Purchasing Intentions Beyond Ethical Marketing in Advertising Due to Moral Identity Self-Congruence Concerns," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 156(2), pages 357-376, May.
    15. Angela J. Xu & Raymond Loi & Hang-yue Ngo, 2016. "Ethical Leadership Behavior and Employee Justice Perceptions: The Mediating Role of Trust in Organization," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 134(3), pages 493-504, March.
    16. Chaim Letwin & David Wo & Robert Folger & Darryl Rice & Regina Taylor & Brendan Richard & Shannon Taylor, 2016. "The “Right” and the “Good” in Ethical Leadership: Implications for Supervisors’ Performance and Promotability Evaluations," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 137(4), pages 743-755, September.
    17. Q. Miao & A. Newman & J. Yu & L. Xu, 2013. "The Relationship Between Ethical Leadership and Unethical Pro-Organizational Behavior: Linear or Curvilinear Effects?," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 116(3), pages 641-653, September.
    18. Matthew J. Quade & Sara J. Perry & Emily M. Hunter, 2019. "Boundary Conditions of Ethical Leadership: Exploring Supervisor-Induced and Job Hindrance Stress as Potential Inhibitors," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 158(4), pages 1165-1184, September.
    19. Huaiyong Wang & Guangli Lu & Yongfang Liu, 2017. "Ethical Leadership and Loyalty to Supervisor in China: The Roles of Interactional Justice and Collectivistic Orientation," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 146(3), pages 529-543, December.
    20. Michael Brown & Linda Treviño, 2014. "Do Role Models Matter? An Investigation of Role Modeling as an Antecedent of Perceived Ethical Leadership," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 122(4), pages 587-598, July.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:jbuset:v:133:y:2016:i:2:d:10.1007_s10551-014-2369-3. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.