Ally or antagonist? Moral identity determines the curvilinear effect of ethical leadership on employee stress

Suzanne van Gils and Ingvild Müller Seljeseth

Journal of Business Research, 2025, vol. 199, issue C

Abstract: Building on the Job Demands-Resources theory, we present moral identity internalization as moderator for the curvilinear relationship between ethical leadership and stress. Study 1 (N = 231, MTurkers) showed participants a vignette indicating low, high, or extreme levels of ethical leadership and then measured moral identity and stress. We found that extreme levels of ethical leadership are more stressful than high levels for participants low in moral identity, while there is no difference in stress for those high in moral identity. Study 2 (N = 257, prolific.com participants) replicated these findings using continuous measures and Johnson-Neyman analyses. Both studies support our hypothesized interaction pattern: While higher levels of ethical leadership negatively related to stress for those high in moral identity, those low in moral identity may experience a U-shaped pattern such that high levels of ethical leadership are optimal, while both low and extreme levels of ethical leadership evoke stress.

Keywords: Ethical leadership; Stress; Moral identity; Job demands resources; Curvilinear (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0148296325003716
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jbrese:v:199:y:2025:i:c:s0148296325003716

DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2025.115548

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Business Research is currently edited by A. G. Woodside

More articles in Journal of Business Research from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().