ORIGINAL PAPER The Mind is Willing, but the Situation Constrains: Why and When Leader Conscientiousness Relates to Ethical Leadership Mayowa T. Babalola 1 • Michelle C. Bligh 2 • Babatunde Ogunfowora 3 • Liang Guo 4 • Omale A. Garba 5 Received: 31 July 2016 / Accepted: 25 March 2017 Ó Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2017 Abstract While previous research has established that employees who have a more conscientious leader are more likely to perceive that their leader is ethical, the underlying mechanisms and boundary conditions of this linkage remain unknown. In order to better understand the rela- tionship between leader conscientiousness and ethical leadership, we examine the potential mediating role of leader moral reflectiveness, as well as the potential mod- erating role of decision-making autonomy. Drawing from social cognitive theory, results from two samples of workgroup leaders and their immediate reports situated in Africa and Asia show that leader conscientiousness is positively related to leader moral reflectiveness, which in turn, is positively associated with employees’ assessment of ethical leadership. Furthermore, and consistent with our hypothesis, results from the two samples show that leader decision-making autonomy moderates the indirect path from leader conscientiousness to ethical leadership through moral reflectiveness, such that only morally reflective leaders who have high (versus low) decision-making autonomy at work engage in ethical leadership behaviors. In our discussion, we highlight the theoretical and practical implications of our findings and suggest ways in which organizations can better foster ethical leadership. Keywords Ethical leadership Á Leader conscientiousness Á Moral reflectiveness Á Decision-making autonomy Introduction Over the last decade, high-profile incidents of leaders’ ethical failure in organizations such as Enron, WorldCom, and Tyco have increased both scholars’ and practitioners’ attention to the ethical aspects of leadership. Despite this attention, and the increasing pressure on corporate leaders to behave ethically, new incidents of ethical failure con- tinue to emerge, such as the recent Volkswagen emission test scandal. Brown et al. (2005) define ethical leadership (EL) as ‘‘the demonstration of normatively appropriate conduct…and the promotion of such conduct to followers through two-way communication, reinforcement, and decision-making’’ (p. 120). Scholars studying ethical leadership behavior in organizations have empirically demonstrated its positive links with important work out- comes such as employee ethical conduct (Mayer et al. 2012), organizational citizenship behavior (Babalola et al. 2017; Newman et al. 2014; Ogunfowora 2014a), voice and employee cynicism (Pelletier and Bligh 2008; Walumbwa and Schaubroeck 2009), reduced workplace conflicts (Ba- balola et al. 2016), performance (Zhu et al. 2015), and (ethical) job applicant attraction (Ogunfowora 2014b). Although the majority of this work has focused on the consequences of ethical leadership, comparatively less research has addressed its antecedents (e.g., Kalshoven et al. 2011; Mayer et al. 2012; Walumbwa and Schau- broeck 2009; Zhu et al. 2016). For instance, Mayer et al. & Liang Guo Liang.Guo@neoma-bs.fr 1 Peter Faber Business School, Centre for Sustainable HRM and Well-being, Australian Catholic University, Melbourne, Australia 2 Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, CA, USA 3 Haskayne School of Business, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada 4 NEOMA Business School, Rouen, France 5 Boston University, Boston, MA, USA 123 J Bus Ethics DOI 10.1007/s10551-017-3524-4 Author's personal copy