Journal
JOURNAL OF BUSINESS ETHICS
Volume 156, Issue 2, Pages 357-376Publisher
SPRINGER
DOI: 10.1007/s10551-017-3577-4
Keywords
Ethical leadership; Moral identity; Purchasing intention; Advertising; Marketing; Self-congruence; Ethics; Moral; Cause-related marketing
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Ethical leadership has so far mainly been featured in the organizational behavior domain and, as such, treated as an intra-organizational phenomenon. The present study seeks to highlight the relevance of ethical leadership for extra-organizational phenomena by combining the organizational behavior perspective on ethical leadership with a classical marketing approach. In particular, we demonstrate that customers may use perceived ethical leadership cues as additional reference points when forming purchasing intentions. In two experimental studies (N=601 and N=336), we find that ethical leadership positively affects purchasing intentions because of customers' concerns for moral self-congruence. We show this by means of both mediation and moderation analyses. Interestingly, the effect of perceived ethical leadership on purchasing intentions holds over and above the ethical advertising claims (e.g., cause-related marketing) that are commonly used in marketing. We conclude by discussing the possible ramifications of ethical leadership beyond its effects on immediate employees.
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