The effect of ethics-based leadership on employee's virtuous behavior through regulatory focus factors : A study of marketing agencies in Ho Chi Minh city

Abstract

The aim of this study is to examine the influence of ethics-based leadership on employee virtuous-ethical behavior through ethical regulation focus factors among marketing agency companies in Ho Chi Minh City. In this dissertation, I have adapted the model by Shao (2010), with an addition of ethical contingent reward as another factor. I hypothesize that the three factors of ethical charismatic leadership are idealized influence behavior, inspiration motivation and idealized influence attributed. Together with ethical leadership and ethic-base contingent reward leadership, these factors have both direct effects and through ethical regulatory factors, indirect effects on employee virtuous-ethical behavior. Data were collected from 283 cases of employees from marketing agency company in Ho Chi Minh City, which is dedicated to a specific field rather than being generic in the original work from Shao (2010). The finding presents a ssimilarity to Shao’s and other authors’ work in which the ethical leadership, ethical contingent reward, inspiration motivation factor all together have direct effect on employee virtuous-ethical behavior. However, a minor difference is that while ethical charismatic leadership factors only have direct effect on employee ethical behavior, the ethical leadership and ethical contingent reward both have indirect effect on virtuous behavior through ethical regulatory factors (ie. ethical promotion focus and ethical prevention focus).