The Impact of Ethical Leadership Behavior on Employee Outcomes

The topics of authentic leadership and the ethical behavior of leaders have received significant interest in recent years due to the plethora of ethical scandals in corporations. In this paper, the authors' have developed a theoretical framework that maintains that employees' psychological empowerment mediates the relationship between leaders' ethical behaviors and employees' organizational commitment and trust in leaders. The authors' also argue that authenticity (i.e., the consistency between leaders' true ethical intention and behavior) moderates the relationship between leaders' ethical behaviors and employee outcomes.