When Ethical Leadership Triggers Followers' Gratitude: Focus on Medical Representatives in Moroccan Pharmaceutical Industry

Throughout the long history of moral philosophy, the focus has generally been on moral reasoning, whereas the moral emotions have been regarded with some suspicion” (Haid, 2003, p.852). To respond to dearth of studies emphasizing emotions link with ethical leadership, this paper investigates whether ethical leadership can stimulate followers’ emotions from focusing on district managers (DSMs) and medical representatives (MRs) relationship in the pharmaceutical industry in Morocco. In our study, ethical leadership is defined around two main aspects including moral person and moral manager (Brown and Trevino, 2006). Qualitative data were collected through 15 semi-structured interviews conducted with medical representatives operating as part of the pharmaceutical industry in Morocco. We based our coding process on the Gioia et al., (2012) method. Our study’s results indicate that medical representatives who interacted with DSMs engaging in ethical leadership experience and express gratitude. Medical representatives have reflected experiencing thankfulness and appreciation from working with ethical DSMs, which in turn captures the experience of emotions (i.e., gratitude). In other words, medical representatives interact with their DSMs, and cognitively appraise the DSMs conducts. Through reflecting thankfulness and appreciation towards the DSM, we realize that medical representatives’ gratitude is stimulated as they perceive the DSMs deeds as positive, and moral in nature. Indeed, our study’s results supports the theological basis of gratitude, and indicate that moral considerations are part of the assessment of DSMs conducts and decisions.

Keywords: Ethical leadership, gratitude, moral emotion, medical representatives, district managers.  

JEL Classification:M10, O15

Paper Type: Empirical Research