In the business context, there is a broad spectrum of practices that potentially harm others, yet might benefit the organization. We examined the influence of individual and situational differences in predicting (un)ethical behavior in these moral gray zones using an in‐basket exercise that included covert moral issues in which managers could give unethical instructions to their followers. Results show that individual differences in moral disengagement directly predicted unethical behavior and functioned as a mediator of the relationship between authenticity and unethical behavior. Furthermore, effects differed in weak compared to strong situations. Study 2, replicated the results from Study 1, developed a direct test of the situational strength hypothesis, and showed that high versus low situation strength moderated the relation of moral disengagement to unethical behavior.

We examined the effects of subtle and blatant prejudice and the enforcement of workforce homogeneity on employment discrimination in an experimental simulation. German participants who were advised to maintain a homogeneous (i.e., German) workforce, as hypothesized, selected fewer foreign applicants for a job interview than did participants who did not receive this advice. An interaction qualified this main effect, such that subtly prejudiced participants reacted to the advice to maintain a homogeneous workforce, but blatantly prejudiced and nonprejudiced individuals did not. The implications of these findings for research and practice are discussed.

Social discrimination in a personnel‐selection context was studied using an in‐basket exercise. West German participants had to select personnel from an applicant pool that included West German applicants (in‐group members) and East German applicants (out‐group members). As predicted, we found a main effect for an authority's instruction to discriminate against out‐group members. This main effect was, as predicted, qualified by an Instruction Right‐Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) interaction effect. Only high scorers on RWA discriminated against out‐group members when instructed to do so.

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, the way followers understand their role is crucial. For example, some forms of (unethical) leadership only take effect when employees internalize the follower role (DeRue & Ashford, 2010) and embody this role in a way that contributes to (unethical) leadership (Carsten, & Uhl-Bien, 2013; Morrison, 1994). Employees use roles such as leader and follower as cues to structure their expectations about the adequate behavior of people who occupy specific positions (Carsten, Uhl-Bien, West, Patera, & McGregor, 2010; Ilgen & Hollenbeck, 1991). Social-cognitive approaches to leadership (Lord & Maher, 1991) showed that when constructing these roles, employees draw on their cognitive structures and schemas regarding traits and behaviors of leaders and followers, that is, implicit leadership and followership theories (ILTs and IFTs; Shondrick & Lord, 2010; Sy, 2010). More recently, conceptual papers (Epitropaki, Sy, Martin, Tram-Quon, & Topakas, 2013; van Gils, van Quaquebeke, & van Knippenberg, 2010) suggested that ILTs and IFTs also influence how people interpret their own roles. What followers (implicitly) associate with their role should thus influence the nature of their contribution to a broad range of organizational outcomes, including (un)ethical leadership (Carsten & Uhl-Bien, 2013; Parker, 2007). Considering followers' implicit theories seem to be particularly promising in order to understand when and why they contribute to unethical leadership in ambiguous 5296J LOXXX10.1177/1548051817705296Knoll et al.Knoll et al.