Dirty hands make dirty leaders?! How the touching of dirty objects leads to higher rewards for unethical followers

Cramwinckel, F, De Cremer, D and Van Dijke, M ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9974-5050, 2013. Dirty hands make dirty leaders?! How the touching of dirty objects leads to higher rewards for unethical followers. Journal of Business Ethics, 115 (1), pp. 93-100. ISSN 0167-4544

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Abstract

Ethical leaders are not only expected to behave ethically themselves, but also to promote ethical behavior in their subordinates, for example by rewarding ethical behavior and punishing unethical behavior (Treviño, et al., 2000; Treviño & Brown, 2005; Treviño, et al., 2003). In reality however, this does not always happen; leaders sometimes even reward unethical behavior. In the present studies, we want to examine the notion that the ethical behavior of leaders can be influenced by subtle cues related to immorality (i.e., dirty objects in this case), but also by other conflicting motives, such as self-interest. Using this approach we hope to shed more light on the processes that underlie leaders’ decisions to reward ethical transgressions conducted by followers. Furthermore, we examine whether research on the moral-purity metaphor (e.g., Zhong & Liljenquist, 2006; Zhong, et al., 2010b) can be extended to the domain of interdependent social relationships, specifically, the leader-subordinate relationship, and also identify a theoretically relevant boundary condition to this effect in such relationships.

Item Type:	Journal article
Publication Title:	Journal of Business Ethics
Creators:	Cramwinckel, F., De Cremer, D. and Van Dijke, M.
Publisher:	Springer
Date:	2013
Volume:	115
Number:	1
ISSN:	0167-4544
Identifiers:	Number Type 10.1007/s10551-012-1385-4 DOI
Divisions:	Schools > Nottingham Business School
Record created by:	EPrints Services
Date Added:	09 Oct 2015 10:23
Last Modified:	09 Jun 2017 13:28
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/12100

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