For the Greater Good: When Visionary Leadership Fosters Follower Moral Elevation and Unethical Prosocial Behavior

Abstract

While previous research has mostly focused on visionary leadership's positive effects, real-world examples suggest that such leadership might sometimes also cause followers to engage in unethical prosocial behavior to contribute to a vision's noble cause. However, the process and the conditions under which this occurs are poorly understood. We draw on the theory of motivated moral reasoning to argue that visionary leadership promotes follower moral elevation and, in turn, follower unethical prosocial behavior, but that this effect is contingent on the follower's dispositional tendency for perspective-taking. In two experimental studies, we show that visionary leadership only has a positive effect on unethical prosocial behavior through moral elevation among followers with a high dispositional tendency for perspective-taking. Our work identifies the specific mechanism through which visionary leadership is related to unethical prosocial behavior as well as an important boundary condition of this effect. Moreover, it integrates the respective literatures on visionary leadership, moral emotions, and moral judgment.