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When and for Whom Ethical Leadership is More Effective in Eliciting Work Meaningfulness and Positive Attitudes: The Moderating Roles of Core Self-Evaluation and Perceived Organizational Support

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Abstract

Despite urgent calls for more research on the integration of business ethics and the meaning of work, to date, there have been few corresponding efforts, and we know surprisingly little about this relationship. In this study, we address this issue by examining when and for whom ethical leadership is more (or less) effective in promoting a sense of work meaningfulness among employees, and their subsequent work attitudes. Drawing on the contingency theories of leadership and work meaningfulness literature, we speculate that both employees’ core self-evaluation (CSE; as a dispositional characteristic) and perceived organizational support (POS; as a situational characteristic) moderate the relationship, but in different ways, and these associations carry over to employees’ subsequent work attitudes in terms of job satisfaction, organizational commitment and turnover intention. We test our hypotheses with two-wave survey data collected from 377 employees. Results indicate that ethical leadership is effective in eliciting work meaningfulness and attitudes for employees higher in CSE or when POS is lower, and ineffective for those lower in CSE or when POS is higher. A supplementary analysis reveals a three-way interaction between ethical leadership, CSE and POS in predicting a sense of work meaningfulness and subsequent work attitudes. Our research cautions that ethical leadership is not a universally positive practice; it can be ineffective or even have a negative impact under some circumstances.

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Fig. 1

Note The dashed line represents the controlled mediating paths from ethical leadership to work attitudes

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Notes

  1. This scale only captures the subjective dimension of work meaningfulness. We thank an anonymous reviewer for this point.

  2. Since there is a variety of leadership theories (e.g., transformational leadership, distributive leadership, facilitative/deliberated leadership, and relational leadership), future research can extend our understanding of the interactive effects of leadership and POS by applying other leadership theories. By doing so, we can seek to answer some interesting questions such as whether POS would similarly weaken or, on the contrary, strengthen the positive relationship between other leadership styles and work meaningfulness. For example, researchers may want to know how distributive leadership styles (e.g., shared leadership, collective leadership)—the emerging leadership styles that are distinct from the individualistic perspective of leadership (e.g., transformational leadership, ethical leadership) and highlight widespread leadership agency and interdependencies of leadership actors across complex organizations (Bolden 2011; Currie and Lockett 2011)—and POS interact to influence employees’ experienced work meaningfulness. There is a possibility that distributed models of leadership combined with high levels of POS might enhance the experienced meaningfulness of work because leadership capabilities are dispersed through the organization. These issues warrant more attention from researchers since addressing them can lead to providing more insights into how organizations can manage employees’ work meaningfulness effectively. We thank an anonymous reviewer for this suggestion.

  3. We thank an anonymous reviewer for this point.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 71302129).

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  1. Zhen Wang and Haoying Xu have contributed equally to this work.

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  1. Department of Organization and Human Resource Management, Business School, Central University of Finance and Economics, 39 South College Road, Haidian District, Beijing, 100081, People’s Republic of China

    Zhen Wang & Haoying Xu

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  1. Zhen Wang
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  2. Haoying Xu
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Correspondence to Haoying Xu.

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Wang, Z., Xu, H. When and for Whom Ethical Leadership is More Effective in Eliciting Work Meaningfulness and Positive Attitudes: The Moderating Roles of Core Self-Evaluation and Perceived Organizational Support. J Bus Ethics 156, 919–940 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-017-3563-x

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