The double-edged sword of ethical leadership: Investigating when and why ethical leadership promotes versus inhibits team performance

IF 4.9 2区心理学 Q1 PSYCHOLOGY, APPLIED

Applied Psychology-An International Review-Psychologie Appliquee-Revue Internationale Pub Date : 2024-05-07 DOI:10.1111/apps.12542

Ye Liu, Yan Shao, Jin Yan

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Although previous studies pointed towards a positive association of ethical leadership and team performance, we suggest that ethical leadership may have unintended, paradoxical effects on interpersonal dynamics within the team, and, ultimately, team performance. Drawing on social information processing theory, we propose that ethical leadership can be a mixed blessing, with paradoxical impacts on team performance via two distinct pathways—task and relationship conflicts, contingent upon the team's informal power disparity. Specifically, we propose that ethical leadership has a positive indirect effect on team performance via reducing relationship conflict but a negative indirect effect on team performance via suppressing task conflict. Those indirect effects are more pronounced when the team has a more egalitarian power structure among their members. Results from a three-wave field study, in which we surveyed 90 work teams in China, provided support for our conceptual model. Our findings reveal the benefits and costs of ethical leadership and the importance of examining informal power disparity in this leadership process.

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道德领导的双刃剑：研究道德领导力何时以及为何会促进或抑制团队绩效

尽管以往的研究表明，道德领导与团队绩效之间存在正相关，但我们认为，道德领导可能会对团队内部的人际动态产生意想不到的矛盾影响，并最终影响团队绩效。借鉴社会信息处理理论，我们提出，道德领导力可能是喜忧参半的，它通过两个不同的途径--任务冲突和关系冲突--对团队绩效产生矛盾的影响，这取决于团队的非正式权力差异。具体来说，我们认为道德领导力会通过减少关系冲突对团队绩效产生积极的间接影响，但会通过抑制任务冲突对团队绩效产生消极的间接影响。当团队成员之间的权力结构较为平等时，这些间接效应会更加明显。我们对中国的 90 个工作团队进行了三波实地研究，研究结果为我们的概念模型提供了支持。我们的研究结果揭示了道德领导的益处和代价，以及在这一领导过程中审视非正式权力差异的重要性。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Applied Psychology-An International Review-Psychologie Appliquee-Revue Internationale PSYCHOLOGY, APPLIED-

CiteScore

13.70

自引率

5.60%

发文量

期刊介绍： "Applied Psychology: An International Review" is the esteemed official journal of the International Association of Applied Psychology (IAAP), a venerable organization established in 1920 that unites scholars and practitioners in the field of applied psychology. This peer-reviewed journal serves as a global platform for the scholarly exchange of research findings within the diverse domain of applied psychology. The journal embraces a wide array of topics within applied psychology, including organizational, cross-cultural, educational, health, counseling, environmental, traffic, and sport psychology. It particularly encourages submissions that enhance the understanding of psychological processes in various applied settings and studies that explore the impact of different national and cultural contexts on psychological phenomena.