Abstract:

While the study of leadership has generally examined how leaders influence the behavior of their followers, the purpose of this study is to reverse the lens to question how and when the followers’ personality profile could lead to social responsibility by leaders.

The authors argue that the linkages between followers’ entitlement and leaders’ socially responsible workplace decisions occurs via resilience and that leaders’ levels of moral education mediate this relationship.More specifically, building upon agency and stewardship theories, we examine the possibility that followers' (here teachers of public and private schools) negative personality traits exposing related negative acts could lead to social responsibility by leaders (here head-teachers). Our findings suggest that when their teachers are characterized by psychological entitlement, head-teachers are more likely to grant themselves resilience to behave in a socially responsible manner. Additionally, we find that head-teachers are especially likely to present resilience as a result of teachers’ bad personal traits when head-teachers’ moral education is high. Thus, the study provides evidence that bad personality traits on the part of followers may psychologically address to leaders to engage in subsequent social responsibility, thereby contributing to our understanding of how followers can influence leader behavior, and how vicarious resilience operates in organizational contexts.

Keywords:

Social responsibility, psychological entitlement, resilience, moral education.