Ethical leadership and reputation: Combined indirect effects on organizational deviance

This is a pre-copyedited, author-produced PDF of an article accepted for publication in Journal of Business Ethics following peer review. The version of record Neves, P., & Story, J. (2015). Ethical Leadership and Reputation: Combined Indirect Effects on Organizational Deviance. Journal of Business Ethics, 127(1), 165–176. “The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10551-013-1997-3”.

The interest in ethical leadership has grown in the past few years, with an emphasis on the mechanisms through which it affects organizational life. However, research on the boundary conditions that limit and/or enhance its effectiveness is still scarce. Thus, the present study examines the relationship between ethical leadership and affective commitment to the organization, as a reflection of the quality of the employee-organization relationship (EOR) and proposes this relationship is conditional on the supervisor’s personal reputation for performance (i.e., the moral standards are coupled with work effectiveness). Moreover, we propose the interaction effect of ethical leadership and reputation for performance on affective commitment to the organization has carryover effects for organizational deviance. Using a sample of 229 employees and their respective supervisors from 18 organizations we confirmed our hypotheses. Our findings suggest that ethical leadership is positively related to employees’ affective commitment to the organization, particularly when supervisor’s reputation for performance is high, which in turn is associated with decreased organizational deviance. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings conclude the paper.