When Employees Retaliate Against Self-Serving Leaders: The Influence of the Ethical Climate

Document Type

Article

Source of Publication

Journal of Business Ethics

Publication Date

1-1-2019

Abstract

© 2019, Springer Nature B.V. Leaders have been shown to sometimes act self-servingly. Yet, leaders do not act in isolation and the perceptions of the ethical climate in which leaders operate is expected to contribute to employees taking counteractive measures against their leader (that is, employees’ desire for retaliation, and supervisor-directed deviance). We contend that in an ethical climate employees feel better equipped to stand up and take retaliation measures. Moreover, we argue that this is explained by employees’ feelings of trust. In two studies using different methods (an experimental study and a multi-source study), we predict and find evidence that the relationship between self-serving leader behavior and employees’ desire for retaliation and supervisor-directed deviance is stronger when the ethical climate is high rather than low. Moreover, we show that trust in the leader mediates these relationships.

ISSN

0167-4544

Publisher

Springer Science and Business Media B.V.

Volume

168

First Page

195

Last Page

213

Disciplines

Business

Keywords

Desire for retaliation, Ethical climate, Self-serving leader behavior, Social exchange, Social information processing theory, Supervisor-directed deviance

Scopus ID

85067262609

Indexed in Scopus

yes

Open Access

yes

Open Access Type

Green: A manuscript of this publication is openly available in a repository

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