Organizations increasingly encourage, recognize, and reward ethical leadership to preempt the economic and reputational risks associated with ethical failures. At the same time, organizational leadership positions are disproportionately occupied by individuals higher in narcissism. We highlight how the combination of these two phenomena carries important organizational implications by examining how ethical leadership behaviors differentially impact leaders based on their level of narcissism. Building upon self-concordance theory, we introduce a model of contingent consequences of ethical leadership. Our model identifies motivational (i.e., self-efficacy of the leader) and social (i.e., admiration of the leader) mechanisms that explain why ethical leadership positively predicts leadership effectiveness for some leaders, but not for others. We test our model using a field study and two experiments. Findings from these three studies point to a problematic leadership paradox: When leaders higher in narcissism behave more ethically, they incur higher motivational costs and reap fewer social benefits compared to their peers who are lower in narcissism. Results reveal risks to leadership effectiveness for narcissistic leaders who attempt to lead more ethically. We discuss implications for ethical leadership research and practice. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

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当自恋者体现道德时：道德领导的偶然后果。

组织越来越多地鼓励、认可和奖励道德领导力，以预防与道德失败相关的经济和声誉风险。与此同时，组织领导职位不成比例地由自恋程度较高的人占据。我们通过研究道德领导行为如何根据自恋程度对领导者产生不同的影响，强调这两种现象的结合如何带来重要的组织影响。基于自我一致性理论，我们引入了道德领导的偶然后果模型。我们的模型确定了激励（即领导者的自我效能）和社会（即对领导者的钦佩）机制，这些机制解释了为什么道德领导力可以积极预测某些领导者的领导有效性，但不能预测其他领导者的领导有效性。我们通过实地研究和两个实验来测试我们的模型。这三项研究的结果指出了一个有问题的领导悖论：当自恋程度较高的领导者表现得更加道德时，与自恋程度较低的同龄人相比，他们会付出更高的激励成本，获得的社会效益也更少。结果揭示了那些试图以更道德的方式进行领导的自恋型领导者的领导有效性面临的风险。我们讨论道德领导力研究和实践的影响。（PsycInfo 数据库记录 (c) 2023 APA，保留所有权利）。