The impact of ethical leadership prototype on the effectiveness of ethical leadership: The mediating role of elevation

Abstract: Ethical leadership (EL) is a positive leadership style demonstrated to be effective in promoting employee performance. However, previous research has mainly focused on the cognitive perspective to explain the positive effects of ethical leadership on employee outcomes, and the role of emotion has received little attention. In this research, we advance this stream of research by taking into account employees’ implicit beliefs of ethical leadership (i.e., ethical leadership prototype, ELP). Specifically, drawing from the theoretical model of discrete positive emotions in the workplace and implicit leadership theories, this paper theorized and tested the mediating role of elevation on the relationship between ethical leadership and employee task performance and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) moderated by employee ELP.

We tested our hypotheses in a multi-source, multi-wave field study (Study 1) and two experiments (Study 2 and 3). In Study 1, we tested our full theoretical model (i.e., H1 to H4) by collecting multi-wave and multi-source data from 193 leader-employee dyads. Empirical results in Study 1 only demonstrated the positive relationship between EL and employee elevation (H1) and the indirect relationship between EL and employee OCB via employee elevation (H2b). To replicate these empirical findings and test the moderating role of employee ELP further, we conducted two vignette experiments. In Study 2 and Study 3, we recruited 400 and 200 participants from two online survey panels (i.e., the Sojump and the Credamo) and manipulated ethical vs. unethical leadership (Study 2) and high vs. low ethical leadership (Study 3). Experimental results in both studies replicated the positive relationship between EL and employee elevation (H1) and the indirect relationship between EL and OCB via elevation (H2b); in addition, the moderating effects of employee ELP on the relationship between EL and elevation (H3) and the indirect relationship between EL and OCB via elevation (H4b) were demonstrated.

This research makes several theoretical contributions. First, this research contributes to our understanding of the process through which EL influences employee outcomes by identifying employee ELP as a crucial contingency. Second, by demonstrating the mediating mechanism of the positive moral emotion of elevation (with general positive affect being controlled), this research provides a finer-grained understanding of the affect-based mechanism for the effectiveness of EL. Third, by investigating when EL activates employee elevation, this paper enriches the knowledge of the antecedents of felt elevation. Finally, this paper extends implicit leadership theory by applying it to a specific leadership domain and highlighting the crucial role of ELP.

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