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The congruence effect of ethical values of leaders and followers on ethical climate

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Abstract

Although research on organizational ethical climate (OEC) has attracted ample attention, research on antecedents of OEC remains relatively scarce. This study investigates the critical internal drivers of OEC: leader and followers. Specifically, by integrating social cognitive theory and balance theory, we use a dyadic approach to consider leaders’ and followers’ ethical values in predicting OEC. We also investigate whether and how the congruent ethical values of leaders and followers predict OEC. We conducted a multilevel field study with 155 leader–follower dyads and used polynomial regression with response surface analysis. Our results reveal that there is a main effect of ethical values of leaders and followers on OEC as independent ethical identities, but their congruent ethical values do not predict OEC. Theoretical and practical implications or our findings has also been discussed.

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Data availability

The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

I am thankful to my teachers and parents who supported me to complete this work. We also acknowledge that this paper was accepted in Academy of Management conference 2022.

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  1. School of Management, Xi’an Jiaotong University, No. 28, Xianning West Road, Beilin District, Xi’an, Shaanxi, 710049, China

    Saleem Azhar & Zhang Zhe

  2. University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, Whitewater, WI, USA

    Aditya Simha

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  1. Saleem Azhar
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Correspondence to Saleem Azhar.

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Azhar, S., Zhe, Z. & Simha, A. The congruence effect of ethical values of leaders and followers on ethical climate. Curr Psychol 43, 8272–8287 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-023-04920-7

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