The influence of moral leadership (in)congruence on negative workplace gossip is explained by perceived hypocrisy

Extant research positions moral leadership as a cornerstone of virtuous leadership, emphasizing its favorable impact on employees’ assessments of leaders. Nevertheless, such studies often overstate its advantages by conflating the personal (moral person) and managerial (moral manager) dimensions of moral leadership, while neglecting its potential drawbacks. This research bridges leadership identity theory and ethics scholarship to investigate both aspects. Employing polynomial regression and response surface analysis, it demonstrates that alignment between a leader’s moral person and moral manager identities is associated with lower negative workplace gossip. Leaders proficient in both dimensions experience the lowest levels of gossip, whereas those with a high moral person-low moral manager profile face less gossip than the inverse scenario. Additionally, this study examines perceived leader hypocrisy as a mediating mechanism, illuminating the potential drawbacks of moral and virtuous leadership.