ABSTRACT Leaders have been thought to play a vital role in influencing employees’ unethical behavior. However, what happens to leaders and followers in the aftermath of unethical conduct has received little attention in the literature. Drawing from the correspondent inference theory, we examine the conditions under which leaders attribute their followers’ unethical behavior to poor moral character and eventually assign them low performance ratings. Through a two-wave research design and data from 290 matched employee–leader dyads, we found that a leader (...) is more likely to infer that a follower who has engaged in unethical behavior is of poor moral character when the leader has a higher moral identity, and the leader will impose lower performance ratings on this follower when the leader prefers lower moral decoupling. (shrink)

The role of other-directed moral emotions (e.g. anger) in constructing leadership ethics is well-discussed, yet the effects of leaders expressing self-directed moral emotions remain under-explored. This paper focuses on guilt, a typical self-conscious moral emotion, to investigate the interpersonal prosocial impact of a leader’s guilt expression. Drawing from the emotion as social information theory, we propose that a leader’s guilt expression can enhance followers’ forgiveness and organizational citizen behaviors by evoking followers’ moved emotions and delivering the leader’s benevolence information. Additionally, (...) we examine the moderating role of the quality of leader–member exchange in these effects. Our results, obtained through a two-wave field survey (Study 1), a critical incident technique experiment (Study 2), and a scenario experiment (Study 3), provide support for most of our hypotheses. Our research contributes to the EASI theory and literature on emotions and provides practical guidance on leader emotional management. (shrink)