IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/119579.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Is unethical leadership a negative for Employees' personal growth and intention to stay? The buffering role of responsibility climate

Author

Listed:
  • Ruiz‐Palomino, Pablo
  • Martínez‐Cañas, Ricardo
  • Bañón‐Gomis, Alexis

Abstract

Various forms of unethical leadership are associated with a wide range of negative outcomes, including decreases in subordinates' intention to stay, which is associated with higher turnover, among other negative organizational outcomes. Since the strength of the association between unethical leadership and intent to stay is variable, we examined personal growth satisfaction as a mediator and responsibility climate as a moderator of the relationship. In a Spain-based sample of 150 employees, we found as anticipated, that personal growth satisfaction mediated the negative impact of unethical supervision on intention to stay. In terms of moderation, also as expected, high (versus low) responsibility climate weakened the negative relationship between unethical leadership and subordinates' personal growth satisfaction, as well as the indirect negative impact of unethical leadership on subordinates' intention to stay. Importantly, since unethical leadership is difficult to eliminate totally, our findings are significant because they suggest several ways to minimize its negative effects.

Suggested Citation

  • Ruiz‐Palomino, Pablo & Martínez‐Cañas, Ricardo & Bañón‐Gomis, Alexis, 2021. "Is unethical leadership a negative for Employees' personal growth and intention to stay? The buffering role of responsibility climate," MPRA Paper 119579, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:119579
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/119579/1/MPRA_paper_119578.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Alison Pritchard & Miles Richardson & David Sheffield & Kirsten McEwan, 2020. "The Relationship Between Nature Connectedness and Eudaimonic Well-Being: A Meta-analysis," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 21(3), pages 1145-1167, March.
    2. Suleyman M. Yildiz, 2018. "An empirical analysis of the leader–member exchange and employee turnover intentions mediated by mobbing: evidence from sport organisations," Economic Research-Ekonomska Istraživanja, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 31(1), pages 480-497, January.
    3. Yuyan Zheng & Chia-Huei Wu & Les Graham, 2020. "Work-to-non-work spillover: the impact of public service motivation and meaningfulness on outcomes in work and personal life domains," Public Management Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 22(4), pages 578-601, April.
    4. Albert Satorra & Peter Bentler, 2001. "A scaled difference chi-square test statistic for moment structure analysis," Psychometrika, Springer;The Psychometric Society, vol. 66(4), pages 507-514, December.
    5. Maxim Egorov & Armin Pircher Verdorfer & Claudia Peus, 2019. "Taming the Emotional Dog: Moral Intuition and Ethically-Oriented Leader Development," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 160(3), pages 817-834, December.
    6. Joon Hyung Park & Min Z. Carter & Richard S. DeFrank & Qianwen Deng, 2018. "Abusive Supervision, Psychological Distress, and Silence: The Effects of Gender Dissimilarity Between Supervisors and Subordinates," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 153(3), pages 775-792, December.
    7. Oi Siu & Francis Cheung & Steve Lui, 2015. "Linking Positive Emotions to Work Well-Being and Turnover Intention Among Hong Kong Police Officers: The Role of Psychological Capital," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 16(2), pages 367-380, April.
    8. Akanksha Bedi & Can M. Alpaslan & Sandy Green, 2016. "A Meta-analytic Review of Ethical Leadership Outcomes and Moderators," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 139(3), pages 517-536, December.
    9. Gordon Wang & Rick D. Hackett, 2016. "Conceptualization and Measurement of Virtuous Leadership: Doing Well by Doing Good," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 137(2), pages 321-345, August.
    10. Michael Palanski & James Avey & Napatsorn Jiraporn, 2014. "The Effects of Ethical Leadership and Abusive Supervision on Job Search Behaviors in the Turnover Process," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 121(1), pages 135-146, April.
    11. Raymond Loi & Long Lam & Ka Chan, 2012. "Coping with Job Insecurity: The Role of Procedural Justice, Ethical Leadership and Power Distance Orientation," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 108(3), pages 361-372, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Shirel Damti & Guy Hochman, 2022. "Personality Characteristics as Predictors of the Leader’s Ethical Leadership in Regular Times and in Times of Crisis," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(16), pages 1-17, August.
    2. Ahmed Mohammed Sayed Mostafa & Sam Farley & Monica Zaharie, 2021. "Examining the Boundaries of Ethical Leadership: The Harmful Effect of Co-worker Social Undermining on Disengagement and Employee Attitudes," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 174(2), pages 355-368, November.
    3. Jarrod Haar & Maree Roche & David Brougham, 2019. "Indigenous Insights into Ethical Leadership: A Study of Māori Leaders," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 160(3), pages 621-640, December.
    4. Orlando C. Richard & O. Dorian Boncoeur & Hao Chen & David L. Ford, 2020. "Supervisor Abuse Effects on Subordinate Turnover Intentions and Subsequent Interpersonal Aggression: The Role of Power-Distance Orientation and Perceived Human Resource Support Climate," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 164(3), pages 549-563, July.
    5. Afif G. Nassif & Rick D. Hackett & Gordon Wang, 2021. "Ethical, Virtuous, and Charismatic Leadership: An Examination of Differential Relationships with Follower and Leader Outcomes," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 172(3), pages 581-603, September.
    6. John J. Sosik & Jae Uk Chun & Ziya Ete & Fil J. Arenas & Joel A. Scherer, 2019. "Self-control Puts Character into Action: Examining How Leader Character Strengths and Ethical Leadership Relate to Leader Outcomes," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 160(3), pages 765-781, December.
    7. Rafael García Martín & Alfonso Duran-Heras & Karen Reina Sánchez, 2023. "Influence of Leadership Styles on Sustainable Development for Social Reconstruction: Current Outcomes and Advisable Reorientation for Two Aerospace Multinationals—Airbus and TASL," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(19), pages 1-29, September.
    8. Takuma Kimura & Mizuki Nishikawa, 2018. "Ethical Leadership and Its Cultural and Institutional Context: An Empirical Study in Japan," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 151(3), pages 707-724, September.
    9. Ruth Hancock & Marcello Morciano & Stephen Pudney & Francesca Zantomio, 2015. "Do household surveys give a coherent view of disability benefit targeting?: a multisurvey latent variable analysis for the older population in Great Britain," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 178(4), pages 815-836, October.
    10. Kurt T. Dirks & Patrick J. Sweeney & Nikolaos Dimotakis & Todd Woodruff, 2022. "Understanding the Change and Development of Trust and the Implications for New Leaders," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 180(2), pages 711-730, October.
    11. Dara M Wald & Susan K Jacobson, 2014. "A Multivariate Model of Stakeholder Preference for Lethal Cat Management," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(4), pages 1-9, April.
    12. Sai-fu Fung & Esther Oi-wah Chow & Chau-kiu Cheung, 2020. "Development and Evaluation of the Psychometric Properties of a Brief Wisdom Development Scale," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(8), pages 1-14, April.
    13. Sohn, Stefanie, 2017. "A contextual perspective on consumers' perceived usefulness: The case of mobile online shopping," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 22-33.
    14. Laura Castro-Schilo & Barbara L. Fredrickson & Dan Mungas, 2019. "Association of Positive Affect with Cognitive Health and Decline for Elder Mexican Americans," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 20(8), pages 2385-2400, December.
    15. Zi Jia Ng & Eugene Scott Huebner & Alberto Maydeu-Olivares & Kimberly Joy Hills, 2018. "Confirmatory Factor Analytic Structure and Measurement Invariance of the Brief Multidimensional Students’ Life Satisfaction Scale (BMSLSS) in a Longitudinal Sample of Adolescents," Child Indicators Research, Springer;The International Society of Child Indicators (ISCI), vol. 11(4), pages 1237-1247, August.
    16. Junjiao Feng & Liang Zhang & Chunhui Chen & Jintao Sheng & Zhifang Ye & Kanyin Feng & Jing Liu & Ying Cai & Bi Zhu & Zhaoxia Yu & Chuansheng Chen & Qi Dong & Gui Xue, 2022. "A cognitive neurogenetic approach to uncovering the structure of executive functions," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-19, December.
    17. Michael Sheppard, 2020. "The relationship between discretionary slack and growth in small firms," International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal, Springer, vol. 16(1), pages 195-219, March.
    18. Kaili Zhang & Bin Zhao & Kui Yin, 2024. "When Leaders Acknowledge Their Own Errors, Will Employees Follow Suit? A Social Learning Perspective," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 189(2), pages 403-421, January.
    19. Rasim Serdar Kurdoglu & Nüfer Yasin Ateş, 2022. "Arguing to Defeat: Eristic Argumentation and Irrationality in Resolving Moral Concerns," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 175(3), pages 519-535, January.
    20. Jorge Sinval & M. Joseph Sirgy & Dong-Jin Lee & João Marôco, 2020. "The Quality of Work Life Scale: Validity Evidence from Brazil and Portugal," Applied Research in Quality of Life, Springer;International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies, vol. 15(5), pages 1323-1351, November.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Intention to stay; Moderated mediation; Personal growth satisfaction; Responsability climate; Unethical leadership;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • M1 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Business Administration
    • M10 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Business Administration - - - General
    • M12 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Business Administration - - - Personnel Management; Executives; Executive Compensation

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:119579. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Joachim Winter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.