How and When Leaders’ Perceptions of Team Politics Influence Justice Rule Adherence: A Moral Self-Regulation Perspective

Leaders enact justice in a workplace that is often replete with various political dynamics such as goal conflicts, cliques, and differential treatments. Understanding how and when workplace politics influence leaders’ justice rule adherence is theoretically and practically important. In this paper,...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of business ethics Vol. 192; no. 2; pp. 385 - 405
Main Authors Liu, Depeng, Chen, Mo, Ren, Isabelle Yi, Pang, Xuhong, Zhao, Yapu
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Dordrecht Springer Netherlands 01.06.2024
Springer Nature B.V
Subjects
Adherence
Behavior
Business and Management
Business Ethics
Cliques
Ecological momentary assessment
Education
Employees
Ethics
Hypotheses
Justice
Management
Morality
Organizational justice
Original Paper
Perceptions
Philosophy
Political leadership
Politics
Quality of Life Research
Regulation
Regulation theory
Rules
Sampling
Self regulation
Social interaction
Subordinates
Teams
Workplaces
Construal level
Justice rule adherence
Perceptions of team politics
Moral self-regulation theory
Justification for unjust behavior
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Summary:Leaders enact justice in a workplace that is often replete with various political dynamics such as goal conflicts, cliques, and differential treatments. Understanding how and when workplace politics influence leaders’ justice rule adherence is theoretically and practically important. In this paper, we conceptualize the workplace as a political arena and adopt moral self-regulation theory to explore how and when leaders’ perceptions of team politics (PTP) impact their justice rule adherence. We hypothesize that leaders’ PTP prompts them to justify subordinates-directed unjust behaviors, which in turn reduces their justice rule adherence. Furthermore, we hypothesize that leaders’ high construal level mitigates the negative effect of PTP on justice rule adherence. We conduct three studies to examine our theoretical model at both the within- and between-person levels. Results from two interval-based experience sampling studies (within-person) and one time-lagged scenario-based experiment (between-person) demonstrate consistent support for our hypotheses. We conclude by discussing the theoretical and managerial implications of our research.
ISSN:0167-4544
1573-0697
DOI:10.1007/s10551-023-05549-z