Fight or flight: how gender influences follower responses to unethical leader behaviour

Does unethical leader behaviour produce gendered responses? We study follower response to unethical leader behaviours of bribery and workplace harassment. Our findings, based on an experiment, suggest that leader gender, gender congruence, and implicit gender biases influence follower responses to unethical leader behaviour. Specifically, implicit gender-authority biases (measured with an IAT) partly explain why followers fight back against deviant female leaders and flee from deviant male leaders. These findings raise the troubling implication that unethical male leaders will remain entrenched in positions of power.