Influence of self-serving leadership on employees' helping behavior

Abstract

We explored the effect of self-serving leadership on employees' helping behavior, focusing on the mediating role of moral disengagement and the moderating role of prosocial motivation. We recruited employees and direct supervisors of six companies in China, and analyzed data from 295 participants using structural equation modeling and hierarchical regression. Self-serving leadership had a significant negative impact on employees' helping behavior, and moral disengagement mediated the relationship between self-serving leadership and employees' helping behavior. Further, prosocial motivation moderated this relationship, that is, the stronger (vs. weaker) was the prosocial motivation of employees, the weaker (vs. stronger) was the effect of self-serving leadership on employees' helping behavior.

One pot sets another boiling: A case of social learning perspective about leader self-serving behaviour and followers self-serving counterproductive work behaviour

“…The first aim was achieved by testing H1 that empirically established a positive relationship between leaders' self-serving behaviour and self-serving counterproductive work behaviour. In this regard it is evident that leader self-serving behaviour, in general, has been investigated with different behaviours like organization citizenship behaviour, helping behaviour, knowledge hiding, supervisor-directed deviance, and deviant work behaviours [ 12 , 16 , 17 , 44 ]. So in the light of existing literature, the current study proposed and empirically established a positive relationship with self-serving counterproductive work behaviours.…”

“…The second aim was achieved by empirically testing the H2 and H3 and followed by empirical investigation of the H4 proposing an underlying mechanism of self-serving cognitive distortions in the relationship between leaders' self-serving behaviour and self-serving counterproductive work behaviour. In this regard, the literature reveals that moral disengagement has been investigated as an underlying mechanism between leaders' self-serving behaviour and helping behaviour [ 17 ]. It is pertinent to note that moral disengagement denotes a set of cognitive strategies individuals use to evade ethical self-regulatory processes that generally avoid transgression [ 6 ].…”

“…Leader's self-serving behaviours generally impair the helping behaviour of employees [ 17 ] and boost negative work behaviours like organizational deviance, interpersonal deviance [ 10 ] and deviant work behaviours [ 12 ]. Such negative work behaviours can be attributed to the creation of an immoral work climate by a self-serving leader where the employees can place a preference for their self-interests and are not penalized for it [ 16 ].…”

“…Leader self-serving behaviour has been investigated with moral disengagement [ 17 ] but this study will focus on self-serving cognitions. Moreover, it is important to note that these two constructs are different as the latter is composed of primary and secondary distortions.…”

“…However, another study highlights that in response to the self-centred acts of the leader, their subordinates may learn (see social learning theory Bandura, 1986) to hide the knowledge and this destroys their team's creativity [ 16 ]. On the other hand, “how” employees indulge in different behaviours while observing self-serving leaders has been answered in the literature by empirically establishing that the activation of moral disengagement [ 17 ]results in subordinates learning [ 18 ] to exhibit deviant workplace behaviour [ 12 ]. So, in the light of existing literature, the second aim of the current study was about answering “how” observing a self-serving leader results in the adoption of self-serving CWB.…”