Context Matters Less Than Leadership in Preventing Unethical Behaviour in International Business
研究通过跨国调查发现，伦理领导力通过减少工具性伦理氛围和个人责任推卸来抑制员工不道德行为，且这一过程不受国家腐败水平影响，表明组织比预期更少调整伦理标准以适应环境。
Abstract This study empirically tests a sequential mediation model that links ethical leadership with employees’ unethical behaviour. The corruption index for countries is used as the moderator, because it represents both the instrumental ethical climate and the employee displacement of responsibility embedded in society’s ethical standards. A total of 175 participants comprising 41 teams (134 dyads) across 13 countries participated in a dyadic two-wave survey. The findings show that ethical leadership has an indirect influence on the avoidance of unethical behaviour by reducing the instrumental ethical climate and by negating the displacement of individuals’ responsibility. In addition, the results also show that this process is not sensitive to the countries’ corruption levels. Such findings suggest that organizations are less prone to adjust their ethical standards to the environment than is usually expected. Accordingly, ethical leaders of MNCs may be instrumental in counteracting any corruptive pressure in the social environment, and likewise, non-ethical leaders may be a contributing factor to fostering corrupt organizations in a society that otherwise values ethical principles in business.