| Leadership has always been an important research topic in the field of organizational behavior.The study of leadership theory in the West began in the1930 s,focusing on the characteristics and behaviors of leadership,and putting forward the theories of transformational leadership and charismatic leadership.By the1990 s,economic globalization had become the mainstream,and the pattern of economic development had undergone profound changes.Accompanied by this,some enterprises,while seeking to maximize their own interests,ignored social hazards.False advertising,shoddy products,tax evasion,commercial bribery and other behavior harmful to the reputation of enterprises continue to appear.Enterprises were beginning to face more and more social criticism and ethical pressure.From then on,people began to realize that the ethical management in the enterprise organization and the moral character of the enterprise leader are indispensable.Therefore,the academic and management circles pay more and more attention to the leadership ethics.Ethical leadership has gradually become an important aspect of evaluating a leader’s ability and quality.Ethical leadership is a concept of leadership put forward by academic circles under the above-mentioned background.Among the different definitions,the one proposed by Brown and his colleagues is the most representative.They define ethical leadership as the demonstration of normatively appropriate conduct through personal actions and interpersonal relationships,and the promotion of such conduct to followers through two-way communication,reinforcement,and decision-making.The existing research has proved that ethical leadership can promote the ethical behavior and restrain the unethical behavior of employees.However,some scholars believe that there are still some deficiencies in the current research on the effectiveness of ethical leadership.Firstly,there is a disconnection between the connotation of ethical leadership and measurement tools.Most empirical studies have adopted the concept of Brown and identified the two core roles involved in the definition: the moral individual and the moral manager.According to the definition of the concept,the moral individual embodies the moral charm of the individual,while the moral manager embodies the management ability.In the view of ethics philosophy,the former is the result of moral self-internalization,and the latter is a management means to realize the goal of ethical management.Obviously,the ethical connotation and extension of the two dimensions are different.However,the current research generally takes ethical leadership as a single-structure,which fails to reflect the characteristics of multiple roles of ethical leadership.A few scales that distinguish the dimensions of the moral individual and the moral manager do not further explore the difference mechanisms of the two dimensions.These omissions will lead to incomplete and unscientific research on ethical leadership.Second,the measurement developed in the Western context can not reflect the prototype of ethical leadership in the Chinese management practice.The western management culture thinks that management is a kind of technology,and all management behavior focuses on the person being managed.Although they proposed that ethical leadership includes the roles of the moral person and the moral manager,their scale focused on measuring the management behavior of the leader,and there was only one question about the personal character of the leader.China has always emphasized "governing by virtue" and "correcting oneself first",which requires managers to pay attention to self-moral cultivation and rely on good moral character to manage the team.In the assessment of managers,"virtue" in the first of the indicators."virtue" is also the most important criterion in the selection of leaders.This is different from the western management culture.Therefore,on the premise of the western primitive concept,how to develop the native ethical leadership scale is the key to further promote the research of ethical leadership in China.Third,although a great deal of research has confirmed the effects of ethical leadership on employee and organizational outcomes,little is known about the effects on the behavior.In management activities,there is an interactive relationship between superior and subordinate.The actions of a leader may affect the leader himself more than his followers.Management process is not just one-way output.The leadership behavior not only affects the receiver,but also has the influence on the actor.Since leaders are often entrusted with the responsibility of being a moral model and taking moral management behavior,it is of great significance to explore how these behaviors affect their working state.Based on the background of Chinese traditional culture and management practice,this study explores the essence and connotation of moral person and moral manager,and develops corresponding measurement tools.On this basis,the moral person and the moral manager as a parallel construct are included in the impact model of leadership and employee behavior in the workplace.This research further distinguishes the effect,mechanism and boundary condition of the moral person and the moral manager to both the actor and receiver.First of all,this study defines the dimensions of the moral person and the moral manager of ethical leadership from the perspective of behavior object,ethical motivation and ethical philosophy,and clarifies the boundary between them.On this basis,initial scales of the moral person and the moral manager were developed with28 items,and exploratory factor analysis of 326 pre-survey samples showed that,moral person includes three aspects: moral character,moral behavior and moral role model;moral manager includes three dimensions: moral communication,moral guidance and supervision,and moral strengthening.Then 210 samples of confirmatory factor analysis,internal consistency analysis and Pearson correlation analysis showed that the scale had good reliability and validity.Secondly,we propose a theoretical model to uncover the underlying mechanism and the boundary conditions of the relationship between supervisors’ leader roles(moral person and moral manager)and their following work engagement.According to the theory of self-perception,the role of the moral person and the moral manager on the actor is discusses.Based on an empirical study of 101 team or department supervisors,it was found that the role of the moral person and the moral manager had a positive influence on their psychological conditions.Psychological meaningfulness and psychological safety had mediating effect on the relationship between moral person and work engagement,and psychological meaning mediated the relationship between moral manager and work engagement.The study also examined the moderating mechanism of organizational competitive climate between the hypothesized relationships.Thirdly,this paper integrates theories of social identity theory and social cognition theory,to develop a conceptual model articulating the effects of supervisors’ moral person and moral manager on their subordinates.Based on an empirical study of 206 employees and 47 managers,it was concluded that the supervisors’ moral person and moral manager was indirectly related to moral voice behavior through pride and moral courage respectively.It revealed the different mechanisms by which moral person and moral manager influence the ethical behavior of subordinates.We further examined that the perceived consistency of superior and subordinate values strengthened the hypothesized relationship between supervisor(moral person)and subordinates’ moral voice,and that organizational performance requirements significantly weakened the hypothesized relationship between supervisors’ role(moral management)and subordinates’ moral voice.The theoretical significance of this study is mainly as follows:(1)from the perspective of parallel constructs,the essence and connotation of moral person and moral manager are defined according to the object of ethical management,motivation of ethical behavior and ethical philosophy.On this basis,a measuring tool of ethical leadership duality structure is developed.This makes a certain contribution to promoting the localization of ethical leadership and lays a good foundation for better distinguishing the mechanism from different dimensions;(2)based on the perspective of actor-centered,this paper constructs a research model from the perspective of self-perception theory,and verifies how the moral person and the moral manager stimulate their own psychological state,and then affect their working state.This result indicates that ethical leadership can benefit from this behavior,which fills the theoretical gap between ethical leadership and leadership benefits;(3)from the perspective of receiver-centered,this study distinguishes the mechanism of the influence of moral person/manager on subordinates’ moral advice.The results deepens and expands the two-pillar model of ethical leadership,and further enriches the research on the effect mechanism of ethical leadership on subordinates;(4)from the perspective of congruence,this paper introduces the variables reflecting the characteristics of organizational management practice(organizational competitive climate,organizational performance requirements,and superior-subordinate value congruence),to explore the psychological and behavioral responses of leaders and employees in different organizational situations.The research not only validates the role of congruence in the process of ethical leadership influencing peoples’ behavior and attitude,but also supplements the boundary conditions of ethical leadership from the perspective of human resource management practice.The implications of this study for management practice are as follows:(1)managers should establish the awareness of "morality first",actively cultivate their own ethical qualities,so as to improve their psychological state,working state,etc..It can help realize the virtuous circle between ethical leadership,subordinates and organizational performance;(2)organizations should attach great importance to the ethical leadership and use a series of human resource management practice to select the moral qualified manager and cultivate the manager effectively,so that the manager can be competent for the ethical leadership;(3)enterprises should take the initiative to do a good job in the ethical management of their employees.The enterprise can stimulate the staff to speak out actively for the construction of the organization ethics and restrain the immoral behavior in the enterprise by the personal ethics charm of the manager as well as the organization’s moral supervision and guidance;(4)the organization should make targeted intervention measures to give full play to the positive effect of ethical leadership.For example,to promote the formation of consistent values between superiors and subordinates,so that more employees more consciously accept ethical leadership.The organization should also balance the relationship between economic benefits and ethical construction,make feasible performance appraisal targets for its members,and create a benign competitive environment so as to promote the orderly development of the enterprise. |
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