Elevated to be the whole moral self: exploring how and when ethical leadership inspires followers' peer monitoring behavior

Although extensive studies have emphasized the positive effects of ethical leadership on inspiring followers to be the moral self, its effects on facilitating followers to become the whole moral self remain underexplored. In this study, drawing upon social cognitive theory, we built a moderated mediation model to explore how and when ethical leadership may stimulate followers' peer monitoring behavior and thus become the whole moral self. Using a cross-sectional design to collect data from 366 employees in China, we tested the proposed model and hypotheses. The results showed that ethical leadership was positively related to followers' peer monitoring behavior, and moral elevation partially mediated the above relationship. Furthermore, the results also revealed that followers perceived leaders' intrinsic moral motivation not only amplified the positive effect of ethical leadership on followers' moral elevation, but also strengthened the positive indirect effect of ethical leadership on followers' peer monitoring behavior via moral elevation, while followers perceived leaders' extrinsic moral motivation had the opposite moderating effects. These findings enrich our understanding of ethical leadership by elaborating on the moral elevation process in its impact on followers' behavior, and provide new insights into how to motivate mutual monitoring among members through managerial practices for organizations.