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Why Moral Followers Quit: Examining the Role of Leader Bottom-Line Mentality and Unethical Pro-Leader Behavior

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Abstract

Many business leaders vigorously and single-mindedly pursue bottom-line outcomes with the hope of producing superior results for themselves and their companies. Our study investigated two drawbacks of such leader bottom-line mentality (BLM, i.e., an exclusive focus on bottom-line outcomes at the expense of other priorities). First, based on leaders’ power over followers, we hypothesized that leader BLM promotes unethical pro-leader behaviors (UPLB, i.e., behaviors that are intended to benefit the leader, but violate ethical norms) among followers. Second, based on cognitive dissonance theory, we hypothesized that UPLB, and leader BLM via UPLB, increase turnover intention among employees with a strong moral identity. Data collected from 153 employees of various organizations supported our hypotheses. In particular, leader BLM was positively related to followers’ UPLB. Further, for employees with a stronger (rather than weaker) moral identity: (1) UPLB was positively related to turnover intention; and (2) leader BLM was related to turnover intention via UPLB.

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Abbreviations

BLM:

Bottom-line mentality

UPLB:

Unethical pro-leader behavior

UPB:

Unethical pro-organizational behavior

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank John Waltman for his helpful comments on different versions of the paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Business, 512 Gary Owen Building, Eastern Michigan University, 300 West Michigan Avenue, Ypsilanti, MI, 48197, USA

    Salar Mesdaghinia

  2. College of Business, 507 Gary Owen Building, Eastern Michigan University, 300 West Michigan Avenue, Ypsilanti, MI, 48197, USA

    Anushri Rawat

  3. College of Business and Management, Saginaw Valley State University, 7400 Bay Road, University Center, MI, 48710, USA

    Shiva Nadavulakere

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  1. Salar Mesdaghinia
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  2. Anushri Rawat
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Correspondence to Salar Mesdaghinia.

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Conflict of interest

Salar Mesdaghinia, Anushri Rawat, and Shiva Nadavulakere declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical Approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Informed Consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

Appendix: Scale Validation Study

Appendix: Scale Validation Study

To examine the dimensionality, reliability, and convergent, discriminant, and criterion validities of our UPLB scale, we conducted two supplemental data collections. The first sample (Validation Sample 1) consisted of 223 employees (mean age = 25 years, SD age = 6.76; 48% female) working at various organizations and jobs who had enrolled in undergraduate and graduate business programs at a university in the Midwestern USA. The employees filled out a survey in exchange for extra credit. We collected the second sample (Validation Sample 2) using Amazon Mechanical Turk, an online crowdsourcing service with a participant pool that is representative of the US population (Buhrmester et al. 2011). This sample consisted of 318 employees working at various organizations and jobs in the USA who filled out our online survey in exchange for money (mean age = 38 years, SD age = 10.47; 51% female).

Dimensionality and Reliability

Exploratory factor analyses (EFA) with UPLB items resulted in one factor explaining 79 and 71% of variance in Samples 1 and 2, respectively. Factor loadings were greater than .63 (.77–.92 in Validation Sample 1; .63–.91 in Validation Sample 2). Cronbach’s α was .95 in Sample 1 and .92 in Sample 2. These results indicate that UPLB is unidimensional and reliable.

Discriminant and Convergent Validities

To examine the discriminant validity of UPLB, we identified a number of other variables that could potentially overlap with UPLB. We used confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to compare a model that considered UPLB as distinct from other variables to a series of nested models that combined UPLB with each other variable one at a time. Nested models that showed poorer fit provided evidence that UPLB was distinct from other variables (Bagozzi et al. 1991). Furthermore, as Hair et al. (2006) recommended, we also tested whether the percentage of variance extracted by the UPLB latent factor was greater than the squared correlation between UPLB and other latent factors (or the variance that UPLB explains from other constructs). According to Hair et al. (2006), this approach is more conservative and provides stronger evidence for discriminant validity. We also assessed the convergent validity of UPLB. There were no prior scales for UPLB. However, we examined the correlation between UPLB and other theoretically related constructs such as UPB to examine convergent validity.

Other than our UPLB scale, Validation Sample 1 included a 6-item scale for UPB (Umphress et al. 2010, Study 2), a 7-item LMX scale (Liden et al. 1993), and a 5-item trait amorality scale (a dimension of Machiavellian Personality Scale, Dahling et al. 2009). Further, Validation Sample 2 included a 5-item leader-directed citizenship behavior scale (Malatesta 1995), and a 6-item leader-directed deviant behavior scale (Mitchell and Ambrose 2007). We expected UPLB to be strongly correlated with, yet distinguishable from UPB from which UPLB was derived. That is because UPLB and UPB include similar behaviors, but have different targets (supervisor vs. organization). We also distinguished UPLB from LMX to show that UPLB is not merely a regular component of the exchange relationship between leaders and followers. In addition, we expected UPLB, which is influenced by the situation, to be positively correlated with, yet distinguishable from a stable amoral personality. UPLB should also be distinguishable from citizenship behaviors which seek to benefit the supervisor in ethical ways. Finally, we expected UPLB to be positively correlated with, yet distinguishable from supervisor-targeted deviance. Both of these are unethical behaviors and, therefore, might have some common causes. However, unlike UPLB, supervisor-targeted deviance involves unethical behaviors against the supervisor. Empirically distinguishing these two variables would refute the view that all unethical behaviors are similar and indistinguishable.

First, we applied the procedure outlined above to the variables included in Validation Sample 1, namely UPLB, UPB, LMX, and trait amorality. A CFA that modeled each variable as a separate factor resulted in a good fit (CFI = .92; RMSEA = .08; SRMR = .06). The fit dropped significantly (by at least Δχ2 (3) = 362.55, p < .001) when we combined UPLB with any other factor. Finally, the average variance extracted by the UPLB factor (.76) was greater than the squared correlations between UPLB and any other factor (.03–.49). These results provide evidence that UPLB is distinct from UPB, LMX, and trait amorality. Table 5 shows the correlation between UPLB and other factors. As expected, the UPLB factor had a strong positive correlation with the UPB (r = .70) and amorality (r = .47) factors, but not to the extent that makes it indistinguishable from them.

Table 5 Inter-correlations among factors (Validation Sample 1)
Full size table

Next, we repeated the same procedure with variables included in Validation Sample 2, namely UPLB, supervisor-directed citizenship behavior, and supervisor-directed deviance. A CFA that modeled each variable as a separate factor resulted in a good fit (CFI = .92; RMSEA = .08; SRMR = .06). The fit dropped significantly (by at least Δχ2 (2) = 731.25, p < .001) when we combined UPLB with any other factor. Finally, the average variance extracted by the UPLB factor (.66) was greater than squared correlations between UPLB and any other factor (.01–.07). These results provide evidence that UPLB is distinct from supervisor-directed citizenship behavior and supervisor-directed deviance. Table 6 shows the correlation between UPLB and other factors. As expected, the UPLB factor was positively correlated with the supervisor-directed deviance factor (r = .26). Taken together, the two validation samples provided evidence on the convergent and discriminant validities of UPLB.

Table 6 Inter-correlations among factors (Validation Sample 2)
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Criterion Validity

To evaluate criterion validity of UPLB, participants in Validation Sample 2 were asked to rate their guilt and fear over the past 30 days each using six items from PANAS-X (Watson and Clark 1999). They were also asked to rate their cynicism, a dimension of burnout, using four items that measured lack of enthusiasm and meaningfulness in job (Schaufeli and Salanova 2007). Although there are no prior data on the relationship between UPLB and these variables, as an unethical behavior, UPLB can lead to guilt (Umphress and Bingham 2011). Also, engagement in UPLB carries the risk of being caught, punished, or fired, all of which instill fear in employees. Furthermore, unethical behaviors can reduce job meaningfulness and contribute to cynicism, which involves indifference toward one’s job. As Table 7 shows, UPLB was significantly correlated with all of these variables in the predicted directions. This provides evidence for criterion validity of UPLB.

Table 7 Means, standard deviations, reliabilities, and inter-correlations (Validation Sample 2)
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Mesdaghinia, S., Rawat, A. & Nadavulakere, S. Why Moral Followers Quit: Examining the Role of Leader Bottom-Line Mentality and Unethical Pro-Leader Behavior. J Bus Ethics 159, 491–505 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-018-3812-7

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