Integrity has been attracting increasing attention in leadership studies (Simons et al., 2013). For instance, in 2011 the editors of The Leadership Quarterly called for papers for a special issue dedicated to the subject of leader integrity (Palanski et al., 2011), and Simons et al. (2013) have organized one or two symposia on this topic at the Academy of Management Annual Conference for several successive years. Academically, integrity has been regarded as a core characteristic of effective leadership (Moorman et al., 2013), an axiom in leadership studies (Craig & Gustafson, 1998), and an idealized leadership style (Palanski & Yammarino, 2007). In the business world, leader integrity came into the spotlight in the wake of scandals at well-known companies such as Enron, Tyco International, and Worldcom (Palanski & Yammarino, 2011), and integrity was mentioned by 70% of enterprises in a survey of Standard & Poor’s 500 Index of companies regarding their organizational values (Guiso et al., 2015). As such, integrity has become a highly relevant issue for both theoretical and empirical consideration.

The main focus in the extant research has been on the positive effects of leader integrity, such as improving employees’ creativity (Peng & Wei, 2018) and job performance (Yang et al., 2019), and reducing employee turnover intention (Moorman et al., 2013) and workplace ostracism (Erkutlu & Chafra, 2016). However, there is still a lack of research on the antecedents of leader integrity. At the individual level, power distance, or the degree of acceptance of unequal power distribution by individuals in an organization (Dorfman & Howell, 1988), involves individuals’ perception of power and status in the organization, which plays an important role in shaping their words and deeds (Kirkman et al., 2009). Leaders with high power distance tend to focus on power and status (Anand et al., 2018). Owing to an apparent feeling of superiority, they care little about the opinions and suggestions of their subordinates (Anand et al., 2018) and are likely to engage in immoral behaviors that impair their integrity, such as word–deed misalignment. Such behaviors could have been inhibited by their moral self-regulatory mechanism (Bandura, 1986), but given that immoral behaviors by leaders do occur in reality, one wonders why this mechanism often fails. We believed that moral disengagement would play an important role. Moral disengagement is a kind of negative moral cognitive tendency that deactivates one’s moral self-regulation to avoid external criticism and internal self-blame for immoral behaviors, and includes eight kinds of disengagement mechanisms (Bandura, 1986). These mechanisms, such as moral justification and external attribution of blame, render moral self-regulatory processes ineffective and increase the incidence of immoral behaviors. In addition, highly narcissistic leaders are particularly self-assertive and lack compassion (Ha et al., 2020), which strengthens the relationship between power distance and moral disengagement.

On the basis of the above analysis, we collected data through a survey and conducted an empirical analysis of the data to test the following: (a) whether there is a relationship between power distance and leader integrity; (b) whether moral disengagement plays a mediating role in the relationship between power distance and leader integrity; (c) whether narcissism can strengthen the relationship between power distance and moral disengagement, and, if so, what is the mediating role of moral disengagement.

Literature Review and Hypothesis Development

Leader Integrity

The word integrity is derived from the Latin word “integer,” meaning whole or complete, and has been used to describe such human qualities as “maintaining a complete and consistent self” (Y. Liu, 2016, p. 773). Thomas Becker (1998), who was the first scholar to introduce integrity into the field of management, believed that integrity is a behavioral commitment based on principles and moral concepts. With the rapid changes that occur in the organizational environment, integrity has been gradually applied to leadership studies, giving rise to the concept of leader integrity, which is the leader’s combination of behavioral and moral integrity, of which behavioral integrity refers to the consistency between the leader’s words and deeds, such as keeping promises and practicing advocated values, whereas the focus of moral integrity is on the morality of the behavior of the leader themself (Moorman et al., 2012).

The Relationship Between Power Distance and Leader Integrity

The greater the power distance in a firm, the more the individual member tends to identify with an unequal distribution of power in organizations and institutions (Kirkman et al., 2009). We expected that high power distance would negatively affect leader integrity: Specifically, managers with high power distance have a sense of superiority regarding their power and position, and disregard interpersonal interactions with subordinates, which leads to greater social distance between leaders and followers (Anand et al., 2018), and a neglect in maintaining personal relationships (Daniels & Greguras, 2014). In addition, managers with high power distance do not care how subordinates view them (Kirkman et al., 2009), which may lead to inconsistency between words and deeds and to immoral behaviors. In contrast, managers with low power distance believe that they and their subordinates are all indispensable parts of the organization and that the difference between the two parts lies in the organizational division of labor rather than in status (Ng & Van Dyne, 2001). As such, managers with low power distance strive to promote and maintain superior–subordinate interactions to establish close and high-quality personal relationships. Consequently, these managers develop a strong attachment to their subordinates (Han et al., 2017), value how subordinates view them, and make their best effort to honor the principle of reciprocity and to fulfill pledges they make to subordinates. In addition, Blodgett et al. (2001) found that, compared with leaders with low power distance, leaders with high power distance have weaker moral sensitivity to and moral perception of the interests of others, and are more likely to manifest inconsistency between words and deeds or engage in immoral behaviors. In view of this analysis, we proposed the following hypothesis:
Hypothesis 1: Power distance will be negatively related to leader integrity.

The Mediating Role of Moral Disengagement

Power distance as a psychological orientation embodying individual values mainly induces moral disengagement through two mechanisms: First, because of differences in the degree to which each individual accepts inequalities in power distribution, they will also differ in sensitivity to inequality according to their level of power distance, and subsequently will develop different psychological perceptions (C. Liu et al., 2013). Leaders with high power distance think that they should enjoy privileges and absolute authority in the organization, believe that differences in power are natural, and take inequity for granted (Bochner & Hesketh, 1994). Even if they engage in immoral behaviors, they believe that such behaviors should be accepted and understood by their subordinates. This is the mechanism underlying moral justification. Second, leaders with high power distance tend to be confident of their own abilities. However, they tend to believe that subordinates’ abilities are rather limited, their views on organizational issues are not comprehensive, and they are not trustworthy (Erez & Earley, 1987). As a result, once failure or doubt is encountered in the organization, the leader is likely to attribute responsibility to external factors, such as their subordinates, which is the mechanism of attribution of blame. Furthermore, individuals with high power distance often lack moral sensitivity, and manifest inconsistent understanding of moral standards and morality in different contexts (Ho & Lin, 2016), which is likely to result in the failure of individual moral self-regulatory mechanisms.

Immoral behavior refers to actions going against social norms and legal provisions. Leader behaviors lacking integrity, such as breaching promises, are immoral. Moral disengagement can reduce the self-restraining power of morality by severing the connection between immoral behaviors and self-blame, thereby boosting the incidence of immoral behaviors. Many studies have shown that moral disengagement can significantly predict individuals’ immoral behavior (e.g., Barsky, 2011; Gan, 2018). Compared to those with lower levels of moral disengagement, individuals with higher levels of moral disengagement are more likely to make immoral decisions and engage in immoral behaviors (Moore et al., 2012). Therefore, we proposed the following hypothesis.
Hypothesis 2: Moral disengagement will mediate the relationship between power distance and leader integrity.

The Moderating Role of Narcissism

Narcissism is a personality trait characterized by inflated self-views, self-centeredness, a strong sense of superiority and privilege, and a strong desire for dominance and power (Paulhus & Williams, 2002). As such, narcissists are more likely to engage in moral disengagement mechanisms via moral defense and external attribution of blame to protect their self-esteem and image (Eisenberg, 2000). Such postulations are supported in existing studies; for instance, Brunell et al. (2008) found that narcissists tend to attribute positive or successful outcomes to themselves, and to blame others or the external environment for failure. Therefore, narcissism can strengthen the relationship between power distance and moral disengagement. Thus, we proposed the following hypothesis:
Hypothesis 3: Narcissism will moderate the relationship between power distance and moral disengagement, such that this relationship will be stronger when narcissism is high.

The Integrated Moderated Mediation Model

On the basis of Hypotheses 2 and 3, in this paper we argue that narcissism will moderate the mediating role of moral disengagement in the relationship between power distance and leader integrity, and that there will be a moderated mediation effect. Thus, we proposed the following hypothesis:
Hypothesis 4: The indirect effect of power distance on leader integrity via moral disengagement will be moderated by narcissism, such that it will be stronger when narcissism is high.

The theoretical model of this study is shown in Figure 1.

Method

Participants

All participants completed the paper-and-pencil survey voluntarily and were informed that the results would be kept confidential and used only for research purposes, and were not for public release or commercial use. The study was approved by the Academic Ethics Committee of Donghua University.

We collected data from leaders and their subordinates employed in 11 enterprises in Nanchang, Jiangxi, China, representing various industries, including finance, communication services, real estate, and manufacturing. To avoid common method bias, we not only used a leader–employee 1:1 matching method to collect data, in which power distance, moral disengagement, and narcissism were rated by leaders, and leader integrity was rated by employees, but also adopted procedural control methods, such as anonymous participation, balancing item order (randomly shuffling the order of all the items), and reducing the ambiguity of the items (determining the Chinese scale items through a translation/back-translation procedure).

The final sample included 253 leaders and 253 employees. Of the leaders, 149 (58.9%) were men and 104 (41.1%) were women. In terms of age, nine (3.6%) were aged 25 years or younger, 60 (23.7%) between 26 and 30 years, 79 (31.2%) between 31 and 35 years, 36 (14.2%) between 36 and 40 years, 39 between 41 and 45 years, and 30 (11.9%) 46 years or older. The average job tenure among the leaders was 14.66 years. Of the employees, 103 (40.7%) were men and 150 (59.3%) were women. In terms of age, 45 (17.8%) were aged 25 years or younger, 124 (49.0%) between 26 and 30 years, 44 (17.4%) between 31 and 35 years, 18 (7.1%) between 36 and 40 years, 14 (5.5%) between 41 and 45 years, and eight (3.2%) 46 years or older. The average job tenure among employees was 7.5 years.

Procedure

First, through recommendations by Master of Business Administration students, we contacted the human resources department of the enterprises where they were employed, explained the purpose of the study, and invited the enterprise to participate in the survey. Eleven enterprises were willing to participate. Second, according to the personnel list provided by each enterprise, we sent out 270 employee survey forms on site and collected 265 completed forms. We then sent survey forms to the leaders of the 265 employees who had completed the first round of the survey and collected 261 leader survey forms. Third, we eliminated forms with invalid responses, such as those with too many missing values, all items filled in with the same response, or mismatches between employees and leaders, and finally obtained 253 matched leader–employee survey forms (response rate = 93.70%).

Measures

To ensure the reliability and validity of the measures, we used well-established scales. These scales, originally developed in English, were translated into Chinese through a standard translation/back-translation procedure (Brislin, 1970). Two coauthors of this paper translated the English scales into Chinese, a doctoral student majoring in English translated the Chinese version back into English, and then the other two coauthors of this paper compared the back-translated English version with the original English version to revise and determine the content of the items in the final Chinese scale. All scales were rated using a 5-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree).

Power Distance
The six-item scale developed by Dorfman and Howell (1988) was adopted for leaders’ assessment of power distance. A sample item is “Managers should maintain distance from employees and avoid off-the-job social contact with employees.” Cronbach’s alpha was .87 in this study.

Narcissism
The four-item scale developed by Jonason and Webster (2010) was used for leaders’ assessment of their narcissism. A sample item is “I like others to praise me.” Cronbach’s alpha was .79 in this study.

Moral Disengagement
The simplified eight-item scale developed by Moore et al. (2012) was used for leaders’ assessment of moral disengagement. A sample item is “People should not be held accountable for doing questionable things when they were just doing what an authority figure told them to do.” Cronbach’s alpha was .83 in this study.

Leader Integrity
The simplified eight-item scale developed by Moorman et al. (2012) was used for the employees’ assessment of leader integrity. A sample item is “The leader is honest.” Cronbach’s alpha was .84 in this study.

Control Variables
We controlled for participants’ demographic variables, including gender, age, and job tenure of leaders and their direct subordinates, because they have been found to be related to leader integrity (Peng & Wei, 2018).

Results

Common Method Bias Test

As the power distance, narcissism, and moral disengagement measures were all filled in by the leader, it was necessary to conduct a common method bias test of the data for these three variables (Podsakoff & Organ, 1986). Following the recommendations of Podsakoff et al. (2003), we conducted Harman’s single-factor test and extracted four factors without rotation, of which the first factor explained 32.39% of the total variance, which is lower than the recommended 40%. Thus, there was no serious common method bias in this study.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis

Mplus 7.4 was used to conduct a confirmatory factor analysis (see Table 1) of the discriminant validity of the overall measurement model. The results show that the four-factor model fit well with the data and was a significantly better fit than other possible models. Therefore, these variables show good discriminant validity.

Descriptive Statistics and Correlation Analysis

Descriptive statistics and correlations for the study variables are presented in Table 2. As shown in Table 2, power distance was positively correlated with moral disengagement and negatively correlated with leader integrity. Further, narcissism was positively correlated with moral disengagement, and moral disengagement was negatively correlated with leader integrity. The results of the correlation analysis align with the theoretical expectations, providing preliminary support for the hypotheses.

Hypothesis Testing

To test all hypotheses we used Model 7 of the PROCESS macro (Hayes, 2013). The sample size for bootstrapping analysis was set at 5,000, and 95% confidence interval (CIs) were obtained. Table 3 shows that after controlling for mediating and demographic variables, power distance was negatively related to leader integrity, and the 95% CI excluded zero. Thus, Hypothesis 1 was supported. We also found that the mediating effect of moral disengagement was significant, and the 95% CI excluded zero. Therefore, Hypothesis 2 was supported.

The moderating effects results in Table 3 show that the interaction term of power distance × narcissism had a significant positive impact on moral disengagement. The 95% CI excluded zero, which indicates that narcissism positively strengthened the relationship between power distance and moral disengagement, and Hypothesis 3 was supported. In addition, according to the method recommended by Aiken and West (1991), we drew the moderating effect diagram of narcissism, as shown in Figure 2.

As shown in Table 3, when narcissism was high the indirect effect of power distance on leader integrity via moral disengagement was significant, and the 95% CI excluded zero. However, when narcissism was low the indirect effect was also significant but was weaker than when narcissism was high, and the 95% CI still excluded zero. The index of moderated mediation was also significant, with a 95% CI that excluded zero. Thus, Hypothesis 4 was supported.

Discussion

We examined the relationship between power distance and leader integrity, and the roles of moral disengagement and narcissism in this relationship. The results demonstrate that power distance was negatively related to leader integrity, moral disengagement mediated the relationship between power distance and leader integrity, and narcissism not only strengthened the relationship between power distance and moral disengagement, but also moderated the mediating effect of moral disengagement. Thus, all four of our hypotheses were supported.

Theoretical Implications

This study expands the existing literature by examining the mechanisms related to leaders’ integrity from the perspective of a cultural-value orientation. The focus in extant studies has mainly been on the positive outcomes of leader integrity, and the antecedents of leader integrity have not been identified. In our empirical study we found that power distance had a significant negative relationship with leader integrity, and the results not only enrich the understanding of leader integrity, but also expand theoretical research in this field.

We also found that power distance was related to leader integrity through moral disengagement. In this light, our study extends research on the mediating role of moral disengagement and contributes to theorizing about the mechanism of influences on leader integrity. More important, in this paper we introduced the variable of narcissism to construct a moderated mediation model and analyze the influence mechanism of power distance on leader integrity, which enabled us to interpret the combined effects of moral disengagement and narcissism more systematically than is allowed for by simple moderation or mediation methods.

Finally, in this study we also focused on the role of narcissism in relation to power distance and moral disengagement, and our findings provide empirical evidence that narcissism can positively moderate the relationship between power distance and moral disengagement; that is, compared to managers who have low levels of narcissism and power distance, managers who are more narcissistic and whose power distance is higher are more prone to moral disengagement. By introducing narcissism as a personality factor, in this paper we clearly revealed the varied effects of power distance across contexts; thus, we have contributed to expanding the boundary and scope of research on moral disengagement.

Practical Implications

On the basis of our findings in this paper, we offer the following tentative recommendations for management practice. First, we found that leaders’ power distance was negatively related to leader integrity and positively related to moral disengagement. Therefore, to improve leader integrity, an early warning system of integrity breaches should be established in organizations to reduce the likelihood of the occurrence of leader behaviors that lack integrity. In addition, human resources departments should regularly organize activities like tea parties and social gatherings in the organization to build a platform for leaders and subordinates to communicate with each other, strengthen mutual understanding, and form closer relationships, thereby reducing leaders’ power distance.

Second, we found that moral disengagement played an important mediating role in the relationship between power distance and leader integrity. In view of this, recruiters in organizations should be vigilant: If a job seeker with a high level of power distance also manifests a high level of moral disengagement, that person is very likely to engage in immoral behaviors that may cause harm and loss to the organization; therefore, such people should not be employed in leadership roles. In addition, there is a need for rules and regulations to be established and optimized in organizations, to clarify the responsibilities of managers and enhance managerial training to improve their moral perceptions, and heighten the moral disengagement of leaders to effectively reduce the incidence of immoral individual and organizational behaviors.

Finally, we found that narcissism positively moderated the relationship between leaders’ power distance and their moral disengagement and also influenced the mediating mechanism of moral disengagement. Therefore, measures should be taken in organizations to control and reduce the negative effects of leaders’ narcissism. On one hand, in the process of recruiting and selecting leaders, it is necessary to evaluate the narcissistic personality of candidates, identify highly narcissistic candidates, and reject them; on the other hand, in daily work, the behaviors of narcissistic leaders can be restrained through performance appraisals and other means. For example, a 360 degree performance appraisal method could be used regularly to evaluate the performance of leaders, with the results forming an important basis for rewards and punishments.

Limitations and Future Research Directions

This study has some limitations. First, the only antecedent of leader integrity we considered was power distance. However, in some existing theoretical studies, the researchers have indicated that individual traits of leaders (Simons, 2002) and the atmosphere of the organization in terms of integrity (Palanski & Yammarino, 2009) also affect leader integrity. As such, there is a need to strengthen research on antecedents of leader integrity in future studies by examining more antecedent variables. Second, although we used the leader–subordinate pairing method in data collection to mitigate the influence of common method bias in our study, our sampling was not completely random, and the data were only cross-sectional, as limited by study conditions. In future studies, we hope to include samples from different regions and cultural backgrounds over a given time period for a longitudinal study. Finally, the scales used in this paper are all based on well-established scales developed in a Western cultural background, but differences between Chinese and Western cultures may affect the applicability of the scales. Therefore, future studies could further develop or revise scales for power distance, moral disengagement, narcissism, and leader integrity in the Chinese cultural context.

Conclusion

Drawing on moral disengagement theory (Bandura, 1986), we delineated the mechanism of the mediating role of moral disengagement in the relationship between power distance and leader integrity, and the moderating role of narcissism in the relationship between power distance and moral disengagement. We also found that narcissism strengthened the mediating role of moral disengagement. Our results provide greater understanding of how power distance affects leader integrity, and have enriched related research on leader integrity, providing guidance for preventing damage to leader integrity.

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Xiaokang Zhao, Glorious Sun School of Business and Management, Donghua University, No. 1882 Yan’an West Road, Changning, Shanghai 200051, People’s Republic of China. Email: [email protected]