Recently, Wang Zheng, Associate Professor of the Department of Leadership and Organizational Management, School of Management, and his co-authors published a paper entitled “Leaders and the Punishment of Misconduct: Examining the Roles of Leader Moral Identity and Cognitive Load” in the Journal of Applied Psychology, a top journal in Management and Applied Psychology (TAMUGA-8, JCR 1, ABS Journal List 4*, one of the 50 top journals recognized by the Financial Times, with a 5-year Impact Factor 13.718). Associate Professor Wang Zheng is the corresponding author, and Shandong University is the only corresponding author affiliation.
Punishing an employee who makes mistakes is one of the most common management techniques leaders use to deal with employee misbehavior, such as withholding bonuses or assigning more work tasks to them. Since a leader’s punishment not only discourages him or her from repeating the mistake, but also sends a clear signal to other employees to avoid similar behaviors. But there is an important question that what types of leaders tend to punish their employees for misbehavior and how the process happens?
Based on the Moral Identity literature, this study explores the impact mechanisms and boundary conditions of leaders’ moral identity on punishing employees' misconduct. Moral identity depicts a person’s moral self, and individuals with stronger moral identity are more likely to view morality as central to their sense of self, thus affecting their view of the world and standard of dealing with matters. Through two empirical studies (Studies 1 and 2) and one experimental study (Study 3), we found that leaders’ moral identity is positively related to their punishment of employees’ misbehavior under high cognitive load, and we also found that moral anger is a key psychological mechanism for the overall effect. This study fills a gap in the literature on moral identity in organizational management, while bringing new insights into the impact of moral identity on leaders in the workplace.
