RT Article
T1 How Does Ethical Leadership Trickle Down? Test of an Integrative Dual-Process Model
JF Journal of business ethics
VO 153
IS 3
SP 691
OP 705
A1 Wang, Zhen
A1 Xu, Haoying
A1 Liu, Yukun
LA English
PB Springer Science + Business Media B. V
YR 2018
UL https://www.ixtheo.de/Record/1785666959
AB Although the trickle-down effect of ethical leadership has been documented in the literature, its underlying mechanism still remains largely unclear. To address this gap, we develop a cross-level dual-process model to explain how the effect occurs. Drawing on social learning theory, we hypothesize that the ethical leadership of high-level managers could cascade to middle-level supervisors via its impact on middle-level supervisors’ two ethical expectations. Using a sample of 69 middle-level supervisors and 381 subordinates across 69 sub-branches from a large banking firm in China, we found that middle-level supervisors’ ethical efficacy expectation and unethical behavior–punishment expectation (as one form of ethical outcome expectations) accounted for the trickle-down effect. The explanatory role of middle-level supervisors’ ethical behavior–reward expectation (as the other form of ethical outcome expectations), however, was not supported. The theoretical and practical implications are discussed.
K1 Social Learning Theory
K1 Ethical outcome expectation
K1 Ethical efficacy expectation
K1 Ethical Leadership
DO 10.1007/s10551-016-3361-x