Project Details
Projekt
Leadership in organizations as a determinant of silence of employees on moral issues
Subject Area
Social Psychology, Industrial and Organisational Psychology
Term
from 2014 to 2019
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 269575522
Economy and society have to pay billions every year due to unethical behavior, e.g. through corruption, violation of health and safety regulations or socially irresponsible action. Therefore, there is an intense debate about the best way to work against unethical behavior in organizations. The behavior of leaders and their influence on the behavior of their employees have been identified as crucial factors in this context. Moreover, a comprehensive understanding of the assumed effects requires both the analysis of moral leadership and unethical leadership behaviors. However, in leadership research this “dark side” of leadership has received insufficient attention up to now. Furthermore, the central proposition that (un)ethical or (im)moral leadership leads to genuine (un)ethical or (im)moral employee behavior has only been rudimentarily tested so far. The proposed research project seeks to close this knowledge gap using a methodologically sound design (multi-level, multi-source, multi-method, longitudinal) based on a new, theoretically derived model. This model describes innovative hypotheses about the effects of morally opposed leadership styles (authentic leadership vs. abusive supervision) on the intentional silence of employees on moral issues as a genuine ethical (non-)behavior. In addition, the phenomenon of employee silence also encompasses aspects of non-silence or taking action. Multiple mediators and moderators at different levels of analysis (dyad, group) and important organizational outcomes (work motivation and performance), which are associated with employee silence on moral issues, are considered. In order to test this model empirically, we collected data from four different organizations engaged in the health care sector at time 1 (T1). We surveyed 737 employees and their 94 supervisors. In addition, 20 supervisors and 28 of their employees participated in structured interviews focusing on the frequency, motives and consequences of silence related to moral issues. This data is used to develop a new “Situational Judgment Test” for silence in organizations. At T2 it was planned to repeat all assessments and integrate data for a longitudinal analysis. Based on unethical behavior in science it was, unfortunately, necessary to develop new instrument for the measurement of authentic leadership in several preparatory studies first (N = 705). Due to this unexpected modification from our plan, measures at T2 are not available yet. The proposed prolongation of our research project has the goal to assess this missing data. Taken together, the project will give new insights regarding important driving factors of ethical behavior and their measurement in organizations and provides a basis for developing interventions that promote an open discourse about moral concerns and issues at work.
DFG Programme
Research Grants
