Actions Speak Louder than Words, Particularly in the East: How Taiwanese Followers Perceive Leaders’ Promotion of Ethical Actions Differently from Followers in the States

Abstract

Although Western theories suggest that ethical leaders should incorporate role modelling with ethical guidance to effectively promote ethical actions, we argue that, in Taiwan, a non-Western setting influenced by Taoism, ‘say less, do more’ may be more appropriate. Mean comparisons, based on a latent profile analysis, indicate that, in our Taiwanese sample, leaders high in role modelling and low in ethical guidance receive at least as high a moral evaluation as that of those high in both. Findings from the United States sample, in contrast, suggest that the latter receive the highest. In a follow-up scenario experiment, we find that, for Taiwanese respondents, leaders’ ethical guidance is negatively associated with perceived leader humility but positively associated with follower depletion and that the ‘say less, do more’ condition obtains the highest perceived leader humility and lowest expected depletion. In contrast, for US respondents, ethical guidance is unrelated to the two outcomes. Accordingly, not only the ideal content but also the ‘best’ enactment of ethical leadership varies across cultures.