Ethical leadership and employee unethical behavior: a dual-processing model

PurposeThis study seeks to apply a dual-processing model to understand how ethical leadership prohibits employee unethical behavior through both employee deontic justice and distributive justice.Design/methodology/approachA survey research was conducted with 62 supervisors and 244 subordinates of 17 firms collected at 2 time points separated by approximately 3 weeks in People's Republic of China.FindingsA multilevel modeling analysis was used to test the dual-processing model. The results showed that both employee deontic justice (moral intuition process) and distributive justice (deliberate reasoning process) significantly mediate the negative relationship between ethical leadership and employee unethical behavior.Practical implicationsAs traditional ethics-training approaches mainly focus on developing the deliberate decision-making process driven by distributive justice, the authors' dual-processing model suggests that moral intuition led by deontic justice is equally important and could significantly inhibit employee unethical behavior. Applying the proposed dual-processing model in the ethics training can enhance the effectiveness of employee moral training.Originality/valuePrevious studies have studied the deliberate reasoning process and moral intuition on employee unethical behavior independently. This study contributes to the current literature by a comprehensive dual-processing model which demonstrates equal impact of employee deontic justice and distributive justice led by ethical leadership on the inhibition of employee unethical behavior.