You may not reap what you sow: How and when ethical leadership promotes subordinates’ online helping behavior: Ethical leadership and online helping behavior

Abstract

Recently, home office and remote working have gained momentum triggering questions of the impact of ethical leadership on helping behavior and its ethical implication for employees and companies. In this study, we propose a moderated mediation model to clarify the mechanism of ethical leadership on online helping behavior, and tested this model using three-wave data from a sample of 481 employees in mainland China. We found that ethical leadership had a positive effect on subordinates’ other-praising moral emotion, and that these moral emotions significantly influenced online helping behavior. Subordinates’ other-praising moral emotion mediated the relationship between ethical leadership and online helping behavior. Moreover, the relationship between ethical leadership and other-praising moral emotion was more significant for employees with high moral identity. Finally, our findings provide new insights into how to motivate employees’ online helping behaviors through managerial practices for organizations.