Leadership Research Summary:
• Authoritarian leadership is of great significance to eastern countries, including China. Meanwhile, unethical employee behavior also exists in all types of social organizations. The relationship between authoritarian leadership and unethical employee behavior is worth studying. Senior leaders (managers) often do not have a direct influence on employees except for through their immediate supervisors.
• The leadership style of senior leaders also influences the leadership style of their subordinates (employees’ direct supervisors). This studyexamines how authoritarian manager leadership trickles down to unethical employee behavior through authoritarian supervisor leadership (through social learning theory and ASA theory) and discusses the moderating effect of leader member exchange (LMX) and an ethical climate.
• Through a questionnaire survey of 406 pairs of leaders, supervisors, and employees, the research results of the multilevel model show that (1) authoritarian supervisor leadership is positively related to unethical employee behavior, (2) authoritarian supervisor leadership mediates the relationship between authoritarian manager leadership and unethical employee behavior, (3) LMX positively moderates the relationship between authoritarian manager leadership and authoritarian supervisor leadership and moderates the mediating effect of authoritarian supervisor leadership, and (4), that an ethical climate negatively moderates the relationship between authoritarian supervisor leadership and unethical employee behavior and moderates the mediating effect of authoritarian supervisor leadership.
Leadership Research Implications & Conclusions:
• First, researchers traced the source of authoritarian leadership in supervisors to reveal the action mechanism of how authoritarian manager leadership affects unethical employee behavior. This is a new mechanism, charting the influence of senior managers on the behavior of ordinary employees in an organization, and that this could be caused by them influencing the leadership style supervisors and thereby influencing the behavior of employees. This also reveals how the leadership style of supervisors is formed. This article has shed more light on the psychological characteristics of supervisors, and how the leadership style of the senior managers may also have an impact on their leadership style.
• Based on previous research, this study further proves that authoritarian leadership is a popular positive leadership technique among the three dimensions of paternalistic leadership (Liu et al., 2013), which can influence unethical employee behavior. This emphasizes that not only western leadership styles can affect unethical employee behavior (such as ethical leadership and responsibility leadership), but that Chinese authoritarian leadership can also have an impact on unethical employee behavior, thereby enriching the research on unethical employee behavior from the perspective of leadership.
• The behavior of managers and employees does not occur in a vacuum, and the LMX and wider ethical climate provide an important organizational context that can have a trickle-down effect on employee behavior. LMX and the wider ethical climate are the lenses through which we interpret trickle-down behaviors, telling us under what circumstances this is more likely to occur and enabling us to identify possible ways in which unethical employee behavior can be reduced. This enriches research on the internal mechanisms in the behavior of senior managers and supervisors (including leadership style) and shows that LMX can also moderate the relationship between the two. Building upon previous studies, we have further demonstrated an internal mechanism of the influence of leadership style on employee behaviors, and the moderating effect of the situational factors of the organizational climate. In different organizational climates, leadership style has different effects on employee behaviors. More importantly, this study investigates the action mechanism between variables through the moderated mediation model, which can more comprehensively and systematically investigate the comprehensive action process of mediating variable and situational variables compared with a single study method, on mediating effect or moderating effect.
• The authoritarian leadership style should be used sparingly. Because authoritarian leadership has a trickle-down effect on the behavior of employees, it is, necessary to encourage leaders to authorize subordinates, communicate information with employees, change ways they criticize employees, and praise their abilities and contributions, in reducing unethical employee behavior. First, supervisors should not adopt an authoritarian leadership style because they are the direct leaders of employees and take direct responsibility for unethical employee behavior. Managers should also not adopt an authoritarian leadership style because authoritarian manager leadership has a profound impact on authoritarian supervisor leadership.
• A highly ethical climate should be created in organizations. The ethical climate negatively moderates the relationship between authoritarian supervisor leadership and unethical employee behavior and moderates the mediating effect of authoritarian supervisor leadership. Therefore, as a team or organization, it is necessary to strive for a good ethical climate, fostering mutual care and concern, and reducing the motivations for engaging in unethical behavior. Employees should then be educated on how to abide by organizational rules and regulations, social laws, and professional codes to restrain unethical behaviors in employees.