 Are morally courageous leaders more effective?Arménio Rego, Ace Volkmann Simpson, Dustin J. Bluhm and Miguel Pina e Cunha Journal of Business Research, 2025, vol. 196, issue C Abstract: Detecting, interpreting, assuming responsibility, and being driven to act upon situations with potential ethical implications requires morally courageous leaders to be continuously ‘tuned’ to the environment. We argue that this ‘tuning’ facilitates leader respect for employees and greater receptiveness to their inputs, and that it is through these mechanisms that leader moral courage is positively related to leader effectiveness. In a multi-source study involving 102 team leaders (assessed by peers, subordinates, and supervisors), we found that leaders with higher levels of moral courage convey greater respect for team members and are more receptive to relational transparency from them, and that such respect and receptiveness enhance leader effectiveness. We also hypothesized and found that leaders who overestimate their moral courage (i.e., who self-describe as being morally courageous while others perceive them as not being so) are particularly less respectful toward team members, and thus are less effective. Keywords: Leader moral courage; Respect; Relational transparency; Leader effectiveness; Self-other (dis)agreement (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jbrese:v:196:y:2025:i:c:s0148296325002462 DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2025.115423 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 |
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