Subordinate reactions to ethical leaders’ abusive behavior: A multiple-wave study

Abstract

This paper examines the role of ethical leadership in mitigating the effects of abusive supervision and subsequent impact on employee outcomes including interaction justice, job attitudes and well-being. We examined two sets of moderated mediating models to link positive and negative leader behaviors together by taking on a subordinate-centric perspective. The first set stipulates that prior ethical leadership, as a moral licence, will reduce the negative impact of subsequent abusive supervision on interactional justice, which, in turn, will enhance subordinates’ job-related attitudes and well-being. The second set hypothesizes that prior ethical leadership will accentuate the importance of interactional justice, making subordinates more easily influenced by subsequent abusive supervision. Data were obtained from full-time Chinese employees by using a three-wave time lagged design (n = 223). The results generally supported our second hypothesized model. Specifically, interactional justice mediated the relations between abusive supervision and work outcomes. Moreover, prior ethical leadership moderated the interactional justice–work outcome relations as well as the indirect effect of abusive supervision on work outcomes via interactional justice.