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Considering recent corporate scandals, organizations have increased their efforts to curb unethical employee behavior. However, little is known about whether leaders comply with these efforts and how they respond to unethical employee behavior, especially when unethical actions benefit the organization. By integrating arguments from social identity and moral disengagement theories, we develop and test a model to explain how leaders respond to unethical pro‐organizational behavior (UPB) among employees. Results from one multi‐wave, multi‐source field study and one experiment showed that leader perceptions of employee UPB were positively related to leader trust in employees when leaders identified strongly with their organization or when they had a strong propensity to morally disengage. Moreover, the results revealed an important three‐way interaction effect. Leaders put considerable trust into UPB‐enacting employees when leaders both identified strongly with the organization and showed high levels of moral disengagement. In contrast, they put little trust into UPB‐enacting employees when leaders identified weakly with the organization and reported low moral disengagement. Furthermore, results showed that leader trust ultimately translated into perceived leader justice toward employees. These findings provide new and important insights into when organizations can(not) rely on their leaders to manage unethical employee behaviors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effectiveness of empowering leadership has been the subject of contrasting views. Numerous studies have adopted an interactive approach to reconciling these inconsistencies and emphasized the role of subordinates' competence and capabilities. We join this stream of discussions by pointing out that leader competence also plays a pivotal role in empowering subordinates. We further postulate that subordinates' relational energy can mediate the interactive effects of empowering leadership and perceived leader competence on task performance. In Study 1, data analyses based on a sample of 397 team members and 112 team leaders reveal that relational energy mediates the interaction effect of empowering leadership and perceived leader competence on subordinates' task performance. In Study 2, data analyses based on 193 leader – follower dyads reveal that the indirect effect of relational energy is still significant after controlling for several alternative mediators commonly used in empowering leadership research (e.g., LMX, intrinsic motivation, and psychological empowerment). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine how CEO narcissism affects firm innovation ambidexterity—the relatively balanced development in existing domains through exploitative innovation and in new domains through exploratory innovation. We theorize that firms led by more narcissistic CEOs are less likely to achieve innovation ambidexterity than those led by less narcissistic CEOs. Drawing on the trait activation theory, we further argue that this negative relationship is strongest when the CEO's power is intermediate and when the firm's reputation in the market is intermediate. Our analyses of a large‐scale onsite survey collected from 132 Chinese firms, matched with their archival patent information, support our hypotheses. Our study first sheds new light on the existing literature on the influence of firm managers on innovation ambidexterity by considering their different personalities. Second, this study contributes to the strategic leadership research on CEO narcissism by extending its implications to innovation ambidexterity as a new organizational outcome. Third, our study indicates that narcissistic CEOs' priority orders to chase the two conflicting needs—that is, the need to dominate decision‐making and the need for acclaim—vary in different scenarios. This finding thus challenges the assumption in prior CEO narcissism research that the behavioral manifestations of narcissistic personalities' different facets are the same regardless of the contextual scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing upon research into relative leader–member exchange (LMX) and social identity approaches to leadership, this study explores how congruence in the LMX quality of individuals and their teammates affects the team identification of those individuals. This, in turn, influences individuals' job performance. Results of polynomial regressions on 575 dyads support the congruence hypothesis. Further, we find asymmetrical incongruence effects in which individuals have lower team identification and poorer job performance when their LMX is lower in quality than their teammates compared to the opposite situation. These findings emphasize the pivotal role played by leaders and teammates in promoting employee team identification at work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While several studies have investigated the effect of employees' need for achievement on their work‐related outcomes, how leader‐follower congruence in need for achievement is related to critical workplace outcomes remains underexplored. Integrating person‐environment theory and similarity‐attraction theory, this study investigated the influences of leader‐follower congruence in need for achievement on followers' job performance and job well‐being through the mediating effect of leader‐member exchange (LMX). Using cross‐level polynomial regression and response surface analysis to analyze the data from 391 leaders and 1,124 followers, we found that leader‐follower congruence in need for achievement had a positive effect on followers' job performance and job well‐being though the mediating role of LMX. The theoretical and managerial implications are further discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]