Embedding Ethical Leadership within and across Organization Levels

We develop and test a model linking ethical leadership with unit ethical culture, both across and within organizational levels, examining how both leadership and culture relate to ethical cognitions and behaviors of lower-level followers. The data were collected from 2,572 U.S. Army soldiers representing three organizational levels deployed in combat. Findings provide limited support for simple trickle-down mechanisms of ethical leadership but broader support for a multilevel model that takes into account how leaders embed shared understandings through their influence on the ethical culture of units at various levels, which in turn influence followers' ethical cognitions and behavior. The influences of ethical leadership occur not only directly, among immediate followers within a unit, but also indirectly, across hierarchical levels, through the cascading of ethical culture and senior leaders' influences on subordinate leader behavior. We discuss scholarly and practical implications for understanding how leaders transmit ethical influence both down and across large organizations.