Summary

Morality and leadership represent two of the constructs most often jointly considered in the management literature, in the forms of moral leadership behaviors and leadership approaches as well as leadership styles and activities of more immoral content. A robust literature has emerged investigating moral and immoral leadership, most prevalently investigating the positive effects of moral leadership styles such as authentic, ethical, and servant leadership, as well as the deleterious impact of immoral leadership approaches such as abusive, destructive, and unethical leadership. Morally valenced leadership within organizations has been shown to affect outcomes for followers, teams, organizations, and external stakeholders such as customers and broader communities. The antecedents of moral leadership have more rarely been examined, with more attention to the “darker” factors precipitating leaders to act in immoral ways. Despite the volume of literature on these topics, surprisingly little scholarship has emerged connecting leadership to morally valenced attributes such as moral person factors, cognition, affect, and motivation, although theoretical connections among these constructs certainly exist. Research on moral and immoral leadership has also remained relatively siloed, and opportunities abound to consider them jointly in more nuanced models of organizational leadership and morality.