IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/oabmxx/v10y2023i2p2233775.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Uncovering the dark side of leadership: How exploitative leaders fuel unethical pro-organizational behavior through moral disengagement

Author

Listed:
  • Saad Basaad
  • Saleh Bajaba
  • Abdulrahman Basahal

Abstract

This study presents a new mechanism for how exploitative leadership could influence unethical pro-organizational behavior (UPOB). This study examines how exploitative leadership affects followers’ moral disengagement from the perspective of social cognitive theory. In addition, it demonstrates how exploitative leadership directly impacts UPOB and how moral disengagement plays a mediating role. The survey collected data from 208 Saudi employees, and hypotheses were tested with hierarchical regression. The results show that exploitative leadership was positively related to UPOB, and moral disengagement fully mediated this relationship. This study suggests managers can take steps to mitigate the negative effects of exploitative leadership that cause moral disengagement and undesirable work behavior. The authors discuss the findings, contributions, limitations, and future directions.

Suggested Citation

  • Saad Basaad & Saleh Bajaba & Abdulrahman Basahal, 2023. "Uncovering the dark side of leadership: How exploitative leaders fuel unethical pro-organizational behavior through moral disengagement," Cogent Business & Management, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 10(2), pages 2233775-223, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:oabmxx:v:10:y:2023:i:2:p:2233775
    DOI: 10.1080/23311975.2023.2233775
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/23311975.2023.2233775
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/23311975.2023.2233775?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.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:taf:oabmxx:v:10:y:2023:i:2:p:2233775. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://cogentoa.tandfonline.com/OABM20 .

    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.