Do Noble Ends Justify Unethical Means? How and When Visionary Leadership Promotes Unethical Behavior

While previous research has mostly focused on visionary leadership’s positive effects, we argue that it can also cause followers to engage in unethical behavior to contribute to the vision’s noble cause. By drawing on the social intuitionist model and the theory of motivated moral reasoning, we propose and empirically show in two experimental studies with a total of 854 participants that visionary leadership in both a gain-framing and a loss-framing can elicit moral elevation in followers, which in turn motivates them to engage in unethical behavior for a greater social good. We find that this effect is especially strong when the leader is perceived as warm and for followers who have a high dispositional tendency for perspective taking. Our work reveals a thus far neglected “dark side” of visionary leadership, identifies boundary conditions of these negative effects, and integrates the respective literatures on visionary leadership, moral emotions, and unethical behavior.