Ceibs Associate Professor of Management Tae-Yeol Kim has done a study that examines how leaders' moral competence is linked to employees' task performance and organizational citizenship behaviours. Moral competence (i.e., the ability to behave according to accepted ethical principles), is an important but still relatively understudied element of competence. The results of Prof. Kim's study show that leaders' moral competence has a positive effect on employees' task performance, organizational citizenship behaviors towards leaders (OCBS), and psychological empowerment. The results also show that employees who have a high match with their leaders in terms of values are more likely to be motivated by leaders possessing high moral competence. Thus an effective way to motivate employees to produce better results is to hire managers who are morally competent. Matching employees with supervisors whose values are similar to their own and providing training to enhance moral skills among leaders can also be effective.

Prof. Kim and co-author Minsoo Kim of the Hanyang University School of Business published their results in theJournal of Business Ethics in an article entitled “Leaders' Moral Competence and Employee Outcomes: The Effects of Psychological Empowerment and Person -Supervisor Fit”.