Management Without Morals: The Detrimental Impact of Amoral Management

We contend that amoral management may have a detrimental impact on employees. Amoral managers abstain from clearly demonstrating ethical behavior or communicating an ethical message to employees. In this research we first develop a 5-item measure of amoral management. Then, we establish a nomological network for amoral management through a test of our theoretical model in a time-lagged study (N = 310). Drawing on implicit leadership theories and conservation of resources theory, we propose that employees have expectations for how a leader will behave in terms of ethics. When they fail to meet those expectations, as an amoral manager does, employees must expend valuable resources to determine how to behave in terms of ethics. This renders them more emotionally exhausted. Unfortunately, with depleted resources, employees become more susceptible to engaging in unethical behavior and performing at lower levels. Interestingly, we find that when these relationships are played out in a strong ethical environment...