Abstract

While charisma in leadership is normally characterized as positive, there is a dark side to charismatic leadership, especially when it comes to ethical decisions. In your Ethical and Strategic Management course, do you remember learning about the importance of leadership to ensure ethical goals are met? This article addresses some of the leadership characteristics that can create unethical workplaces.

Although prior research has emphasized the disproportional contributions to organizations of charismatic leadership, an emerging line of research has started to examine the potentially negative consequences. In this paper, a theoretical framework was proposed for a study of unethical pro-organization behavior through psychological safety based on social information processing theory, which reveals the detrimental eeffect that charismatic leadership can have on workplace behavior. To explore this negative possibility, a time-lagged research design was applied for the hypotheses to be verified using 214 pieces of data collected from a service company in China. According to the results, unethical pro-organizational behavior was indirectly influenced by charismatic leadership through psychological safety. Moreover, when employees experienced high performance pressure, charismatic leadership was positively associated with unethical pro-organizational behavior through psychological safety. The implications of these findings were analyzed from the perspectives of charismatic leadership theory and organizational ethical activities to alter the unethical pro-organizational behavior.

Keywords: charismatic leadership; unethical pro-organizational behavior; psychological safety; performance pressure

Source: International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/15/5546/pdf
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