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Cited by 382

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 80 of the 80 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

When ethical leader behavior breaks bad: How ethical leader behavior can turn abusive via ego depletion and moral licensing.

Open access
Lin, Szu-Han (Joanna), Ma, Jingjing, Johnson, Russell E.·2016·Journal of Applied Psychology

Abstract

The literature to date has predominantly focused on the benefits of ethical leader behaviors for recipients (e.g., employees and teams). Adopting an actor-centric perspective, in this study we examined whether exhibiting ethical leader behaviors may come at some cost to leaders. Drawing from ego depletion and moral licensing theories, we explored the potential challenges of ethical leader behavior for actors. Across 2 studies which employed multiwave designs that tracked behaviors over consecutive days, we found that leaders' displays of ethical behavior were positively associated with increases in abusive behavior the following day. This association was mediated by increases in depletion and moral credits owing to their earlier displays of ethical behavior. These results suggest that attention is needed to balance the benefits of ethical leader behaviors for recipients against the challenges that such behaviors pose for actors, which include feelings of mental fatigue and psychological license and ultimately abusive interpersonal behaviors. (PsycINFO Database Record

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Crossref · 10.1037/apl0000098

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Metadata

Authors
Lin, S.-H. (., Ma, J., & Johnson, R. E.
Venue
Journal of Applied Psychology
Published
2016-06
Volume
101
Issue
6
Pages
815-830
ISSN
  • 0021-9010 (ISSN-L)
  • 1939-1854
OpenAlex
W2406445971
Cited by
382
References
80
FWCI
54.20
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
green

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: When ethical leader behavior breaks bad: How ethical leader behavior can turn abusive via ego depletion and moral licensing. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1037/apl0000098
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Lin, S.-H. (., Ma, J., & Johnson, R. E. (2016). When ethical leader behavior breaks bad: How ethical leader behavior can turn abusive via ego depletion and moral licensing. Journal of Applied Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1037/apl0000098

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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

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