Abstract
Extant research on ethical leadership has mainly focused on how leaders’ ethical leadership behavior influences their followers. However, it is unclear whether and how the behaviors of followers affect leaders and their subsequent ethical leader behavior. Drawing from the theory on moral self-regulation (viz. vicarious moral cleansing), we posit that follower unethical behavior elicits ethical leader behavior as a result of the leader’s perceived loss of moral credits. Results from a field study involving leaders and their followers reveal that when followers engage in unethical behaviors, leaders are likely to perceive a loss of moral credits, which, in turn, motivates them to engage in ethical leadership. Furthermore, we find that leaders with a higher sense of moral ownership are more likely to perceive a loss in their moral credits following their followers’ unethical behavior and, in turn, are more likely to engage in ethical leader behavior. Taken together, our study contributes to the theoretical understanding of followers’ role in the ethical leadership process by providing novel insights into how and when unethical followers may, paradoxically, contribute to the development of ethical leadership in organizations.