Ethics-based leadership and employee ethical behavior: Examining the mediating role of ethical regulatory focus

This dissertation examines the process of how ethics-based leadership affects followers engagement in virtuous-ethical and unethical behavior. Drawing upon the theory of regulatory focus, I propose that distinctive styles of ethics-based leadership will induce in employees differentiated ethical regulatory foci which are related to employees' engagement in distinguish ethics-related behaviors. Specifically, I hypothesize that charismatic ethical leadership induces in employees an ethical promotion focus, while ethical leadership induces in employees an ethical prevention focus. Further a mindset of ethical promotion focus is related to increased engagement in virtuous-ethical behavior, while a mindset of ethical prevention focus is related to decreased engagement in unethical behavior. In addition, I propose that employee chronic regulatory focus moderates the leadership-to-ethical regulatory focus and the ethical regulatory focus-to-behavior relationships. Data were collected from a US-based 162 supervisor and employee paired cross-organizational sample, and employee data were collected at two time points to reduce common method variance. Results indicated that ethics-based leadership induces in employees ethics-specific regulatory foci, which in turn affect their engagement in disparate ethics-related behavior.