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The effects of leaders’ economic and stakeholder values on subordinates’ discretionary behaviors as antecedents of perceived ethical leadership: a multilevel investigation

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Abstract

Drawing on social information processing theory, the present study tested the multilevel indirect effect of leaders’ economic and stakeholder values on subordinate organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and workplace deviant behavior (WDB) through perceived ethical leadership. A dyadic sample of 105 team leaders and 356 corresponding subordinates was used to test our hypotheses. The results of the multi-level analysis showed that leaders’ economic values were negatively related to perceived ethical leadership, and stakeholder values were positively related to perceived leadership. We also found that economic values were negatively related to OCB and positively related to WDB through perceived ethical leadership, and stakeholder values were positively related to OCB and negatively related to WDB through perceived ethical leadership. We discuss theoretical and practical implications, as well as limitations and future research directions associated with the results.

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The data that support the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author. The data are not publicly available due to privacy or ethical restrictions.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful for the contributions of the guest editors and anonymous reviewers for their suggestions on revising this manuscript. This study is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 71,802,134, 72,372,079).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Business Administration, Ningbo University of Finance and Economics, Ningbo, 315175, China

    Mingchuan Yu

  2. School of Business, Shanghai Dianji University, Shanghai, 201306, China

    Yi Dai

  3. Antai School of Economic and Management, Shanghai Jiaotong University, Shanghai, 200052, China

    Miaoxin Xu

  4. Soules College of Business, University of Texas at Tyler, 3900 University Blvd Tyler, Tyler, TX, 75799, USA

    Greg G. Wang

  5. School of Management, Shanghai University of International Business and Economics, Shanghai, 201620, China

    Lihong Wang

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Correspondence to Lihong Wang.

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Yi Dai declares that he has no conflict of interest.

Miaoxin Xu declares that he has no conflict of interest.

Greg G. Wang declares that he has no conflict of interest.

Lihong Wang declares that he has no conflict of interest.

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Yu, M., Dai, Y., Xu, M. et al. The effects of leaders’ economic and stakeholder values on subordinates’ discretionary behaviors as antecedents of perceived ethical leadership: a multilevel investigation. Curr Psychol 43, 12882–12896 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-023-05293-7

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