윤리적 리더십이 비윤리 행동, 내부고발 및 직무성과에 미치는 영향: 개인-조직 적합성의 매개효과 검증

The growing interest in ethical influence of managers has been gradually increased in order to secure corporate competitiveness in line with social demands for ethical management by unethical incidents at home and abroad. Ethical leadership not only affects the employees’ job related attitudes and their job performance, but also has a strong influence on the organization’s performance and culture. However, most of studies on ethical leadership have focused on direct effects of ethical leadership on individual and organizational performance, with less attention given to the employees’ negative attitude like unethical behaviors. This study investigates the effects of leaders’ ethical leadership on followers’, unethical behavior, whistle-blowing intention and job performance. In addition, we attempt to verify the mediating effect of person-organization fit in these relationships. To test the proposed hypotheses in our study, we collected data via a survey with a sample of 224 employees in 15 firms. The major findings are as follows: First, ethical leadership was negatively associated with followers’ unethical behavior, and positively associated with whistle-blowing intention and job performance. The findings suggest that organizations should help develop strong ethical leadership patterns within their teams to bolster subordinates’ positive attitude and job performance. Second, person-organization fit has turned out to have mediation effects on the relationship between ethical leadership on followers’ job performance, unethical behavior and whistle-blowing intention. This result indicated that ethical leadership directly and indirectly effects on job performance, unethical behavior and whistle-blowing intention through person-organization fit. That is, ethical leadership has an influence on the perception that subordinates are compatible with their own and their organization's goals and values, and consequently shows the effect of reducing unethical behavior and improving whistle-blowing intention and job performance. Our study makes key contribution to the literature on ethical leadership, suggesting positive effect of ethical leadership on followers’ attitude and job performance. The findings of the mediation analysis is the primary contribution of this study since little research examined indirect effects of ethical leadership on unethical behavior, whistle-blowing intention and job performance through person-organization fit. Based on these findings, implications of the research findings are discussed, and recommendations for future research are provided. Given the small number of samples, this study constitutes an exploratory attempt in nature. Caution must be exercised in attempting to interpret findings and to generalize the recommendations. The results proposed in this study must be validated by further research in diverse research settings. Causality could not be claimed due to the cross-sectional nature of the data. Longitudinal and experimental designs are needed to settle the dynamic relationships between ethical leadership and followers’ positive or negative attitude and job performance. Such contextual variables are not fully measured in this study but could be included in future research.