A study of trickle-down effects of leader Machiavellianism on follower unethical behaviour: A social learning perspective

Drawing on social learning perspective, we examine the 'trickle-down' effect of the unethical tendencies of Machiavellian (Mach) leaders on followers' behaviour. In particular, we examine follower moral disengagement as a mediator to leader Machiavellianism-follower unethical behaviour link. Further, following personality theory, we investigated whether follower agreeableness acts as a boundary condition for Mach leaders to predict follower moral disengagement, which, in turn, accounts for follower unethical behaviours. We adopted a multilevel design and performed three-phase data collection from leader–follower–follower's proximal coworker triads (triad sets = 316 with a total of 948 data points), where leaders and followers represented sales function, and followers' coworkers represented warehouse supervisory roles whom followers closely associated for work needs. The results of this study provide support for our predictions. This is possibly one study of its kind that examines the trickle-down effect of a leader's negative behaviour manifested through their Machiavellianism trait on followers' unethical behaviour.