Seminar (Dept. of Organization and Human Resources)

Title: Anger for good? Unethical-behavior-targeted leader anger expression and its consequences on team outcomes

Speaker: Shenjiang Mo (School of Management, Zhejiang University)

Time: 14:00 (Wednesday), April 26, 2023

Venue: Room 706, Mingde Business Building

Language：Chinese/English

ABSTRACT:

Although the existing research has documented that leader anger expression toward performance constitutes an important stimulus affecting the whole team, less scholarly attention has been paid to the team outcomes of leader anger expression that is targeted at employees' unethical behaviors. To address this theoretical blind spot, drawing on the fairness heuristic theory, we investigated whether, how, and when unethical-behavior-targeted (UB-targeted) leader anger expression affects team outcomes. Our findings from two time-lagged field studies suggest that distributive justice climate mediates the positive effects of UB-targeted leader anger expression on team organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and team viability. Moreover, we found that leader moral decoupling weakens these indirect relationships. These findings highlight the importance of a fairness perspective in understanding the consequences of leader anger expression targeted at unethical behaviors at workplace.