The majority of theory and research on empowering leadership to date has focused on how empowering leader behaviors influence employees, portraying those behaviors as almost exclusively beneficial. We depart from this predominant consensus to focus on the potential detriments of empowering leadership for employees. Drawing from the social cognitive theory of morality, we propose that empowering leadership can unintentionally increase employees' unethical pro-organizational behavior (UPB), and that it does so by increasing their levels of moral disengagement. Specifically, we propose that hindrance stressors create a reversing effect, such that empowering leadership increases (vs. decreases) moral disengagement when hindrance stressors are higher (vs. lower). Ultimately, we argue for a positive or negative indirect effect of empowering leadership on UPB through moral disengagement. We find support for our predictions in both a time-lagged field study (Study 1) and a scenario-based experiment using an anagram cheating task (Study 2). We thus highlight the impact that empowering leadership can have on unethical behavior, providing answers to both why and when the dark side of empowering leadership behavior occurs. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

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授权领导的隐藏阴暗面：障碍压力源在解释授权员工何时可以促进道德脱离和不道德的亲组织行为方面的调节作用。

迄今为止，大多数关于授权领导的理论和研究都集中在授权领导行为如何影响员工，将这些行为描述为几乎完全有益。我们偏离了这一主流共识，而是关注赋予员工领导力的潜在危害。借鉴道德的社会认知理论，我们提出授权领导可以无意中增加员工的不道德亲组织行为 (UPB)，并且它通过增加他们的道德脱离水平来实现。具体来说，我们认为障碍压力源会产生一种逆转效应，这样当障碍压力源较高（相对较低）时，授权领导会增加（相对减少）道德脱离接触。最终，我们主张通过道德脱离接触赋予领导权力对 UPB 产生积极或消极的间接影响。我们在时间滞后的实地研究（研究 1）和使用字谜作弊任务的基于场景的实验（研究 2）中找到了对我们预测的支持。因此，我们强调了授权领导对不道德行为的影响，并提供了授权领导行为的阴暗面发生的原因和时间的答案。（PsycInfo 数据库记录 (c) 2022 APA，保留所有权利）。为授权领导行为的阴暗面发生的原因和时间提供答案。（PsycInfo 数据库记录 (c) 2022 APA，保留所有权利）。为授权领导行为的阴暗面发生的原因和时间提供答案。（PsycInfo 数据库记录 (c) 2022 APA，保留所有权利）。