Research On The Influencing Mechanism Of Ethical Leadership On Followers' Reporting Of Ethical Problems

Incidences of organizational misconduct have been widespread throughout various organizations in recent years. Such unethical behaviors might cause serious harm to long-term performance and sustained development for organizations. Given the concealment of misconduct and the high cost of monitoring employee behavior in the workplace, encouraging employees to report unethical conduct internally has become an important ethical management mechanism in organizations. As one type of the positive leadership, ethical leadership focuses on the ethical management and has a direct effect on employees' ethical behaviors. Through the literature review on ethical leadership and reporting of ethical problems (REP), we identify the following gaps about the influencing mechanism of ethical leadership on followers' REP in previous researches. First, researchers depended on the reduction of negative cognition to explain the effect of ethical leadership on REP while ignoring the role of positive mental abilities. Second, there was too much emphasis on the cognitive processes by which ethical leadership influenced REP but there is lack of researches on the emotional mechanism. Third, previous researches focused on the relationship between ethical leadership and REP just from the individual level while overlooking the exploration of the multilevel and cross-level influencing mechanism. According to these gaps in previous researches, this study based on the moral conation perspective, the moral emotion perspective, and the moral information processing perspective through three empirical studies, explored the cognition-drive path, emotion-drive path, and multilevel and cross-level processes by which ethical leadership influenced REP.Based on moral conation perspective, study one explored the mediating role of moral potency and the moderating effect of moral identity in the relationship between ethical leadership and REP. Through a two-stage survey during one and a half months, we collected data from 326 employees in multiple organizations. The results of hierarchical regression analysis revealed that ethical leadership had a positive effect on employees' REP and moral potency partially mediated the relationship between the two. In addition, moral identity positively moderated the relationship between ethical leadership and REP, negatively moderated the relationship between ethical leadership and moral potency, and negatively moderated the mediating effect of moral potency between ethical leadership and REP.Based on the affective event theory and by combining a survey study and a scenario experiment, study two examined the effects of enduring affective states and short-lived emotion in the relationship between ethical leadership and REP. We firstly conducted a survey study by collecting data from 318 employees in two times. Then, we conducted a 2(Ethical leadership:Ethical, Unethical)×2 (Moral intensity:High, Low) scenario experiment and Ninety-six undergraduate students voluntarily participated in the study. The results showed that moral emotion partially mediated the relationship between ethical leadership and REP. Furthermore, moral intensity positively moderated the relationship between ethical leadership and moral emotion, and the indirect effect of ethical leadership on REP through moral emotion.By constructing a multilevel model and based on moral information processing perspective, we examined the multilevel and cross-level processes by which ethical leadership influenced REP. We collected data from 302 employees of 67 workgroups in two times. Hierarchical linear modeling results revealed that ethical leadership both at group level and individual level were positively related to employees' REP. Furthermore, ethical climate fully mediated the relationship between group ethical leadership and REP. In addition, ethical climate and differentiated perceived ethical leadership significantly moderated the relationship between ethical leadership and REP at individual level.Finally, this research summarized the main conclusions and theoretical implications. Research limitations and future research directions were also discussed.