The Consequence of Unethical Leader Behavior to Employee Well-Being: Does Support from the Organization Mitigate or Exacerbate the Stress Experience?

ABSTRACT We explore how the impacts of unethical leadership are influenced either beneficially or detrimentally by perceived organizational support. A stress–resource view suggests organizational support is a resource that should offset the negative implications of unethical leadership. The negative exacerbator view suggests that receiving organizational support in light of unethical leadership should heighten the threat because it draws a stronger focus on and salience to the harm of the leader’s behavior for the employee. The results of a time-separated survey study and an experiment support our model and the negative exacerbator view. The findings show that unethical leader behavior elicits negative affect and indirectly (through negative affect) diminishes employees’ well-being and has a stronger effect when perceived organizational support was higher rather than lower.