occurs among followers with stronger coproduction beliefs who do not romanticize leadership.
Hypothesis 4: Romance ofleadership moderates the relationship between coproduction of leadership beliefs and displacement of responsibility such that followers with stronger coproduction beliefs who do not romanticize leaders are less likely to dis place responsibility than any other group.
Method
Pilot Study
Prior to testing the hypothesized model, a pilot study was conducted with undergraduate business stu dents at a university in the Southeastern United States. The purpose of the pilot study was to ensure that the scenario used to convey the unethical situation was believable and understandable (see Alexander & Becker,
1978). Additionally, we wanted to assess whether enough variance was generated on the outcome meas ures to test the full hypothesized model. Participants in the pilot study included 149 students enrolled in an
introductory management course. Respondents were
54% female with an average age of 22 years. Approximately 54% of these students indicated they were working, and 20% were working full time.
Data were collected from students over two sepa rate time periods. At Time 1, a research assistant visited each class and asked students for assistance in completing a personality and beliefs survey for a class project. Measures collected at Time 1 included copro duction of leadership beliefs, romance of leadership, and demographics. At Time 2, approximately 5 weeks later, the principal investigator visited the same classes and asked students to participate in a study on leadership and ethics. The Time 2 survey included a scenario detailing the unethical situation and a series of questions asking whether the participant intended to obey or disobey the manager's request.
The scenario, originally published by Weber
(1991), depicted a situation where an employee at an automotive company was asked to investigate an operating problem on one of the company's new lux ury automobiles. Soon after beginning the investiga tion, the employee's manager approached and asked the employee to fabricate the data and change the
findings of the study.