The Use of Power in Ethical Leadership

Previous research on ethical leadership suggests that ethical leaders use rewards and punishments to discourage unethical behavior in followers. This work, however, has not considered the theory on power, which suggests that rewards and punishments influence behavior differently. Drawing upon previous research on reward and coercive power, that reward power strengthens leaders’ messages and discourages followers’ unethical behavior. In contrast, coercive power weakens leaders’ messages regarding unethical behavior and encourages followers’ unethical behavior. We draw upon research on the negativity bias to argue that when leaders exercise both reward and coercive power in attempt to influence followers’ unethical behaviors, the influence of coercive power will overwhelmingly dominate the leader’s other efforts. We test our hypotheses in supervisor-employee dyads through a survey. Our findings show that, consistent with our predictions, reward power supports the efforts of ethical leadership, but only when coercive power is low. Further, coercive power undermines such efforts.