Ethical Leadership: Assessing the Value of a Multifoci Social Exchange Perspective

In this study, we comprehensively examine the relationships between ethical leadership, social exchange, and employee commitment. We find that organizational and supervisory ethical leadership are positively related to employee commitment to the organization and supervisor, respectively. We also fin...

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Bibliographic Details
Authors: Hansen, S. Duane (Author) ; Alge, Bradley J. (Author) ; Brown, Michael E. (Author) ; Jackson, Christine L. (Author) ; Dunford, Benjamin B. (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Springer Science + Business Media B. V 2013
In: Journal of business ethics
Year: 2013, Volume: 115, Issue: 3, Pages: 435-449
Further subjects:B Leadership
B Leader–member exchange
B Organizational commitment
B Ethical Leadership
B Social exchanges
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Summary:In this study, we comprehensively examine the relationships between ethical leadership, social exchange, and employee commitment. We find that organizational and supervisory ethical leadership are positively related to employee commitment to the organization and supervisor, respectively. We also find that different types of social exchange relationships mediate these relationships. Our results suggest that the application of a multifoci social exchange perspective to the context of ethical leadership is indeed useful: As hypothesized, within-foci effects (e.g., the relationship between organizational ethical leadership and commitment to the organization) are stronger than cross-foci effects (e.g., the relationship between supervisory ethical leadership and commitment to the organization). In addition, in contrast to the “trickle down” model of ethical leadership (Mayer et al. in Org Behav Hum Decis Process 108:1–13, 2009), our results suggest that organizational ethical leadership is both directly and indirectly related to employee outcomes.
ISSN:1573-0697
Contains:Enthalten in: Journal of business ethics
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1007/s10551-012-1408-1