Leadership Charisma

Theoretical Background and Hypotheses

Social Information Processing Theory

Social information processing theory (SIP) indicates that individuals intercept information from their immediate environment for the development of their attitudes, cognition, and behaviors. At the workplace, leaders are one of the primary social environment sources from which members gather clues about attitudes and behaviors when uncertainty and ambiguity arise. The principles of SIP are useful in explaining how charismatic leaders influence followers' behavior through the interpretation of information. When confronted with charismatic leadership, followers may process the information provided by the charismatic leader and adjust their cognition and behaviors to the leadership environment accordingly. Charismatic leadership can convey to employees the social information that supervisors have confidence in the followers' ability and excellent performance. Influenced by this information, employees are inclined to interpret supervisors' behaviors as supportive and a source of psychological safety. This channel is implied or assumed in discussions of charismatic leadership in many studies of leadership and its effects on followers. Thus, we submit that it is critical to test the degree to which the social information process affects followers' UPB.

Charismatic Leadership and Psychological Safety

Psychological safety indicates the degree to which employees feel safe and confident in their abilities. Psychological safety entails the perception that individuals are not scared of negative consequences to their self-impression, status, or career development. Individuals are more likely to feel safe when they act within the boundaries of appropriate behavior. That is, employees have a trusting and supportive relationship with their leaders and colleagues, and followers whose actions align with their leaders' preferences are likely to feel more confident that they will be rewarded. Concerning other corporate climate-related constructs, psychological safety is derived from interactions with leaders. Prior studies have highlighted that leadership is a significant influencing factor in psychological safety and revealed that leaders occupy a dominant position, that could shape followers' psychological safety. For organizational members, leaders are instrumental in determining what is part of their job and what is not. For instance, Xu, Qin, Dust, and DiRenzo suggested that employees are less likely to feel psychological safety when they contradict the tendencies of their leaders, as they presume that their preferred approach to work will be perceived negatively. Thus, we argue that charismatic leadership is crucial to enhancing followers' psychological safety.

Charismatic leadership is referred to as using personal charm, attractiveness, and persuasive communication to exert influence on employees. The social information process viewpoint is especially applicable to charismatic leaders, as their characters set high-performance expectations, instill hope and optimism, and gain trust and respect from their followers. Charismatic leaders transform organizations and members in ways that are distinct from other leaders. They are capable of motivating followers to invest the most effort through articulating a vision for an organization's future. Charismatic leaders also inspire followers to pursue self-development and lead to the satisfaction of followers. When working with charismatic leaders, followers usually feel more confident about themselves and their circumstances in the organization. Psychological safety is defined as a state in which individuals feel that it is safe to take risks when subject to many constraints to achieve corporate goals. Based on SIP, if leaders can convey high confidence in the followers' abilities, followers will feel free from potential threats or embarrassment resulting from mistakes. Thus, charismatic leadership is essential for the corporate climate by exhibiting charisma.

The literature on psychological safety has documented the essential role of leadership in fostering psychological safety by creating norms and guidelines. In prior literature, it was asserted that charismatic leaders are good at emphasizing the relation between effort and essential values, displaying confidence in the followers' abilities, and communicating high-performance expectations by gaining trust and respect from followers. Charismatic leadership develops a positive interface with the operating environment by assisting the company to improve performance. This is beneficial to the organizational climate, as employees can believe in each other without worrying about interpersonal risk, which is a significant feature of psychological safety. When the leader exhibits some charismatic behavioral information, followers may interpret such information and infer that their risky behaviors are likely to be tolerated by the leader. These arguments led to our prediction that charismatic leadership influences the psychological safety perceived by staff, and we hypothesized that:

Hypothesis 1: Charismatic leadership is positively related to followers' psychological safety.

Charismatic Leadership, Psychological Safety, and Unethical Pro-organizational Behavior

SIP indicates that charismatic leadership as a manager's charming behavior was facilitated among followers through organizational skills. In scholarly research devoted to understanding the effect of charismatic leadership on follower cognition and workplace behaviors, prior research has primarily indicated positive relationships between charismatic leadership and corporate performance, knowledge sharing, and innovative behavior. Nevertheless, these studies primarily considered the heroic aspects of charismatic leadership, with less attention devoted to its harmful effects, which makes it challenging to obtain a clear picture of the implications of charismatic leadership. To bridge this gap, and in response to Eisenbeib and Boerner's call for research exploring the dark side of charismatic leadership, we believe that UPB in this context indicates a critical negative side-effect.

Despite the positive outcomes arising from charismatic leadership, researchers have recently proposed that employees may engage in UPB. UPB creates a dilemma in which the interests of external stakeholders and customers are undermined while offering gains to the company. Prior studies demonstrated that UPB is partially motivated by various factors (e.g., organizational identity or commitment to the organization) and organizational identification mechanisms, yet have not examined the social information processing mechanism relating charismatic leadership to UPB.

To address this issue, the current study reveals that charismatic leadership is associated with UPB and that this relationship is mediated by psychological safety. First, charismatic leadership involves communicating a visionary mission and establishing high expectations for followers. This process is promoted through the leader, encouraging followers to exhibit considerable effort and emphasizing a collective identity. Followers who share a charismatic relationship with leaders are likely to identify with them and feel a heightened sense of collective identity and empowerment. When leaders exhibit charisma, articulate an organizational vision, and describe the significance of achieving this vision, followers are more likely to feel safe when taking risks. Thus, followers have a willingness to perform unethical behavior for the sake of the organization, to identify with the vision articulated by charismatic leaders.

Second, charismatic leaders are prepared to take high risks and engage in unconventional approaches to achieve the corporate vision. When followers trust that their leader has sufficient ability, they will feel comfortable in taking risks because of the belief that they will avoid punishment when risk-taking leads to unfavorable outcomes. Indeed, psychological safety has been described as a critical affect-laden cognition that leads to unethical behavior. Prior studies have confirmed the positive effect of psychological safety on unethical behaviors. This suggests that charismatic leaders may be one of the predictors that cultivate followers' confidence in their psychological safety, which in turn contributes to UPB. Thus, we predicted that psychological safety mediates the relationship between charismatic leadership and UPB among followers:

Hypothesis 2: Psychological safety will have a positive relationship with followers' UPB.

Hypothesis 3: Charismatic leadership will have a positive and indirect relationship with followers' UPB through psychological safety.

Moderating Effect of Performance Pressure

Individuals will perceive external information conveyed by leaders in different ways and respond differently to the same leadership behaviors. Previous studies suggested the significance of considering the role played by charismatic leadership through a contextual lens. To gain an understanding of the contextual factors influencing followers' behavior, we considered performance pressure as a moderator, which has been discussed in the literature on unethical behavior. Performance pressure indicates the expectation that followers must deliver excellent performance outcomes. Research on performance pressure has revealed negative consequences, in that it seems to increase poor ethical decision making and stress.

We expect that performance pressure operates as a second-stage moderator, converging with psychological safety to facilitate complex behavior which violates moral norms to benefit organizations. Indeed, the combination of performance pressure and the risk-taking confidence encouraged by psychological safety contributes to a condition in which decisions to engage in unethical behavior for the interest of an organization have a higher likelihood of being encouraged by charismatic leadership. Performance pressure is accompanied by a belief that the current performance is insufficient for achieving what is required. During an increase in performance pressure, the salience of consequences also increases. Employees are aware that their efforts are related to consequences. As suggested by Gutnick et al., performance pressure involves both high demands and high stakes. Heightened performance pressure makes followers accountable for high-quality outcomes, which could lead to an individual achieving a riskier, potentially superior outcome. When confronting a decision, followers who experience high performance pressure can take advantage of the safety of their circumstances to achieve the most beneficial outcome, even if it is considered unethical. As such, as an ethically laden concept, UPB should be more relevant to individuals experiencing higher performance pressure.

When facing high performance pressure, individuals who experience high psychological safety are more likely to conduct UPB, given that charismatic leaders emphasize collective identity, which may motivate followers to do whatever they can to accomplish organizational goals. In particular, charismatic leaders are good at motivating followers to demonstrate considerable effort and behaviors to achieve enhanced performance. When followers perceive performance gaps, they will seek to overcome these to get the job done. The completion of tasks and attitudes toward the completion of work contribute to the generation of risk-taking. Psychological safety is described as a critical cognition in determining unethical behavior because of the interpersonal risks inherent in UPB, given that psychological safety provides a mechanism through which followers perceive the lower potential costs of engaging in UPB.

In contrast, when under low performance pressure, employees with high psychological safety have a lower likelihood of engaging in UPB. While psychological safety induced by charismatic leadership has the potential to prompt followers into engaging with UPB, followers with lower performance pressure are less prone to this effect. People with lower performance pressure consider the moral import of their decisions and are motivated to behave ethically, thereby eliminating the ethicality associated with unethical acts. Thus, we proposed a second-stage moderation of performance pressure on the psychological safety–UPB relationship:

Hypothesis 4: Performance pressure will moderate the relationship between psychological safety and UPB, such that the relationship will be stronger when performance pressure is higher, rather than lower.

Taken together, it is logical to predict that psychological safety will conditionally influence the strength of the indirect relationship between charismatic leadership and UPB. It is expected that high performance pressure strengthens the indirect relationship by enhancing the mediating effect of psychological safety between charismatic leadership and UPB. Hence, by facilitating psychological safety, employees with high performance pressure tend to engage in UPB under the supervision of charismatic leaders. Thus, we propose a moderated mediation model to explain the effect of charismatic leadership on employees' UPB. We hypothesize that:

Hypothesis 5: Performance pressure will moderate the indirect relationship between charismatic leadership and UPB through psychological safety, such that the relationship will be stronger when performance pressure is higher, rather than lower.