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

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Abstract

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.

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Notes

  1. Note, however, that unethical yet pro-organizational behavior has been discussed by scholars in business ethics for a much longer time (see for instance Michalos 1979).

  2. Nevertheless, we deem further research necessary to examine whether leaders’ moral values are in fact associated with transformational leadership since Turner et al. (2002) stated that their findings concerning moral reasoning “only relate the complexity of cognitive developmental skills to leadership behaviors and do not make value judgments about people’s integrity” (p. 309) and Banerji and Krishnan (2000) did not find a relation between transformational leadership and leaders’ preferences for unethical behaviors such as bribery or lying.

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  1. Faculty of Psychology, Ruhr-University Bochum, Universitätsstr. 150, 44780, Bochum, Germany

    David Effelsberg & Marc Solga

  2. FernUniversität Hagen, Hagen, Germany

    Jochen Gurt

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  1. David Effelsberg
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Correspondence to Marc Solga.

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Effelsberg, D., Solga, M. & Gurt, J. Transformational Leadership and Follower’s Unethical Behavior for the Benefit of the Company: A Two-Study Investigation. J Bus Ethics 120, 81–93 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-013-1644-z

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