Paternalistic leadership exists in the Chinese community universally, which includes authoritarian leadership, moral leadership and benevolent leadership. As one dimensionality of paternalistic leadership, the research of moral leadership is so important to the Chinese organizations; Employee unethical behaviors exist in various organizations universally too, and they will do harm to the organizations. There used to be some researches about authoritarian leadership and employee unethical behaviors, but there is still no research in the relationship between moral leadership and employee unethical behavior. The research in the relationship between them is so meaningful. This paper studies the relationship between authoritarian leadership and employee unethical behaviors and the mechanism. First, we studied the relationship between authoritarian leadership and employee unethical behaviors; second, we studied how leader member exchange mediated the relationship between authoritarian leadership and employee unethical behaviors from the perspective of social exchange; third, we studied how ethical climate moderated the relationship between leader member exchange and employee unethical behaviors from the perspective of social learning; forth, we studied how ethical climate moderated the mediating effect of leader member exchange.

We collected data from the participants of the enterprises from Chinese main cities. 95 working teams were chosen as samples, which include at least one leader and 4 other team members, and respondents include supervisors and other team members. Eventually, we obtain the 406 supervisor-employee valid questionnaires. We use Mplus 7.1 to analyze the data. First, we performed confirmatory factor analysis to analyze the discriminant validity of variables; second, we did descriptive statistics; third, we performed tomographic regression analysis; forth, we examined the moderated mediating effect. The results of research indicate: (1) There is a positive relationship between manager authoritarian leadership and employee unethical behaviors; (2) Leader member exchange mediates the relationship between authoritarian leadership and employee unethical behavior completely; (3) Ethical climate moderates the relationship between leader member exchange and employee unethical behaviors, and moderates leader member exchange′s mediating effect.

This paper makes a contribution in three aspects: First, we did research in the relationship between authoritarian leadership and employee unethical behaviors, expanding the research of the two constructs separately; second, we concluded that authoritarian leadership will influence employees′ unethical behavior through the leader member exchange; Third, the boundary conditions of the influence of authoritarian leadership on non-ethical behavior of employees are discussed; Forth, we study the influencing mechanism of the relationship between authoritarian leadership and employee unethical behaviors. The results of this study tell us: (1) authoritarian leadership is a leading style to increase employee unethical behaviors; (2) the senior managers should make an example for middle and junior managers; (3) organizational and team leaders and the other members should do their best to create a good ethical climate, which can reduce employee unethical behaviors. 

Finally we put forward the practical suggestions of this paper: (1) Managers should use less authoritarian leadership, which can reduce unethical behavior of employees. (2) Establishing a good leader member exchange relationship is beneficial to fewer employees′ unethical behavior. (3) Establishing a good ethical atmosphere can help managers reduce non-ethical behaviors of employees.