Shared Ethical Leadership in Teams: Its Emergent Conditions and Effects on Moral Potency, Goal Concessions, Performance, and Ethical Behavior

Ph.D. Candidate Jason Kiker will be defending his dissertation titled, “Shared Ethical Leadership in Teams: Its Emergent Conditions and Effects on Moral Potency, Goal Concessions, Performance, and Ethical Behavior” on 07/14/2021. The time and location is 11:00 am – 1:00 pm, ZOOM

Many thanks to Jason’s dissertation committee: • Committee Co-Chair: Mary Mawritz - Associate Professor – Drexel University • Committee Co-Chair: Christian Resick - Associate Professor – Drexel University • Committee Member: Michael Brown - Professor – Pennsylvania State University • Committee Member: Lauren D’Innocenzo - Associate Professor - Drexel University • Committee Member: Murat Tarakci - Associate Professor – Erasmus University Rotterdam • Committee Member: Wendy Van Ginkel - Associate Professor – Drexel University

Abstract: I adopt a leadership as a networks approach to propose ethical leadership can emerge and be shared among team members. Therefore, I introduce the construct of shared ethical leadership and I begin to build the construct’s nomological network by first examining ethical leadership training and shared leadership training as factors which, when additively combined, promote the density of shared ethical leadership in teams. Further, I examine these antecedents by predicting their effects will be optimized when power differentials between team members and their nominal leader are minimized. Moving to the consequences of shared ethical leadership, I propose a four-path model of social learning and social-exchange effects on proximal and distal team outcomes. First, I suggest that shared ethical leadership promotes the emergence of the team moral potency needed to make ethical choices when confronted with opportunities to ethically transgress. I then predict that the team’s moral potency mediates the positive relationship between shared ethical leadership and team ethical behavior. Additionally, I argue that shared ethical leadership promotes goal concessions among team members and those goal concessions mediate the positive relationship between shared ethical leadership and team performance. I then suggest that shared ethical leadership promotes team information elaboration, which in turn mediates positive relationships with the team’s ethical behavior and performance. I examine the hypotheses in a 2x2x2, between-subjects experiment using a simulated team activity with a sample of 56, 5-person teams (n=280). While the findings indicate a lack of support for my most of my hypothesized relationships, the density of team’s shared ethical leadership network was found to be positively related to team ethical behaviors. In addition, team information elaboration was positively related to team performance. Based on my findings, the theoretical and practical implications of this research are discussed.