The Impact Mechanism Of Differential Leadership On Employees' Workplace Unethical Behavior

As a western proverb goes: good ethics is good business.In modern society,the control and influence of a government is weakening,whereas the voice and binding force of a enterprise organization is strengthening,growing to be the backbone in the development of the society.Consequently,enterprise cultures,enterprise ethics,employees' sense of ability along with employee behaviors are now not only matters of organization development,but also affecting issues on the process of a society.Moreover,following the outbreaks of various unethical events at home and abroad,employees' workplace unethical behaviors have transformed into a practical problem from a philosophical issue.Compared to the increasing study abroad,however,domestic research on employees' workplace unethical behaviors is at the infant stage,even fewer proceeding from enterprise culture under typical Chinese leadership.Therefore,it's of critical necessity and importance to explore into the relationship and influence mechanism between Chinese differential leadership and employees' workplace unethical behaviors under the background of Chinese culture and management practice.The theoretical contribution and the possible innovations are elaborated as follows:To begin with,this thesis introduces differential leadership in localized Chinese context while exploring antecedent variables in employees' workplace unethical behaviors,which is not only distinguished from explorations under other situations or on certain individual factors,but also differs from the studies on employees' workplace unethical behaviors based on western leadership theories.Secondly,this thesis constructs a influence path of “differential leadership ? organizational identification/psychological empowerment ? employees” workplace unethical behaviors ”,revealing the influence mechanism from differential leadership upon employees' workplace unethical behaviors,making important complement to the relating study,effectively adding to the research contents of employees' workplace unethical behaviors and differential leadership.Thirdly,introducing the important culture dimension power distance as a regulated variable,probing into its regulating effect of both direct effect and mediate effect in the influence mechanism of “differential leadership ? organizational identification/psychological empowerment ? employees”,further extends current research boundary conditions.On the basis of summarizing and reviewing literatures,drawing support from Theory of differentiated-ordered associations,Leader-member Exchange Theory,Social Cognitive Theory and Prospect Theory,approaching from the perspective of individual employees,taking individual organizational identification and psychological cognition into consideration,we established a concept model of “ differential leadership-organizational identification\ psychological empowerment-unethical behavior in work place” and put forward the research hypothesis.In the meantime,we drew references from domestic and foreign measurement tools with relatively reliable correlated variables,compiled the initial questionnaire.The initial draft was improved and finalized by small sample pre-testing,expert consulting,learning participants' true attitude and group discussing.Upon the completion of the questionnaire,we conducted the survey among employees from enterprises in developed coastal area,consequently,totally 516 valid samples were obtained.According to relative research at home and abroad,we evaluated the reliability and validity of the data,examined common method bias,and employed multiple linear regression equation to inspect the mediate effect of employees' organizational identification and psychological empowerment between differential relationship and employees' workplace unethical behaviors,along with the regulation effect of power distance.After controlling the demographic variables of gender,education level,work seniority,position,duration of the acquaintance,etc,the empirical results indicate that,support and communication in differential leadership have significant negative impact on employees' workplace unethical behaviors,tolerating lapses has significant negative impact,whereas promotion and rewarding have no significant impact;support and communication have significant positive impact on subordinates' organizational identification,tolerating lapses has significant negative impact on subordinates' organizational identification,whereas promotion and rewarding have no significant effect;organizational identification has significant negative impact on employees' workplace unethical behaviors,in addition,it serves in part as a mediate factor among support and communication,tolerating lapses and employees' workplace unethical behaviors;support and communication have significant positive impact on employees' psychological empowerment,on which tolerating lapses has significant negative impact while promotion and rewarding have no significant impact;psychological empowerment has significant negative impact on employees' workplace unethical behaviors,it also serves in part as a mediate factor among support and communication,tolerating lapses and employees' workplace unethical behaviors;moreover,power distance has significant negative impact on employees' workplace unethical behaviors,it also regulates the relationship between support,communication and employees' workplace unethical behaviors,support,communication and organizational identification,and the relationship between support,communication and psychological empowerment;furthermore,it regulates the mediating effect between subordinates' organizational identification,psychological empowerment and support,communication and employees' workplace unethical behaviors.This research provides certain instructive reference towards the exploration into the internal influence mechanism between differential leadership in Chinese leadership and employees' workplace unethical behaviors.Nevertheless,as the study on differential leadership and employees' workplace unethical behavior is just in its infancy,its essence requires to be more thoroughly learned,the scales need to be further improved,the distinction and measurement between other unethical behaviors concerning in-group\out-group and other workplace misbehaviors remain to be explored.In the meantime,there may exist other factors influencing differential leadership and employees' workplace unethical behaviors,which demands further study afterwards.Furthermore,although we have controlled single source bias through a variety of ways,we conducted a cross-sectional study in the research,therefore the conclusions remains to be considered deliberately,we urge discretion to any inspirations,reference or propagation of the conclusions.