Abstract: Although the cross-research on leadership and business model innovation is flourishing, existing literature still lacks a deep understanding of how leadership moral traits affect business model innovation. Based on the Upper Echelon Theory and attention-based view, introducing managers' exploratory attention and exploitative attention as mediating variables, and dividing business model innovation into novel and efficient types, this paper explores the mechanism of how leader moral ownership influences different types of business model innovation and the boundary conditions. An empirical research based on a questionnaire survey of 135 enterprises shows that:leaders' moral ownership has a negative impact on novelty-centered business model innovation, with exploitative attention and exploratory attention playing a mediating role between the two; Leaders' moral ownership has a positive impact on efficiency-centered business model innovation. Exploitative attention still plays a mediating role, but exploratory attention presents a masking effect, that is, the moral ownership of leaders hinders efficiency-centered business model innovation by inhibiting exploratory attention. As the dynamics of the environment increase, the negative impact of leader moral ownership on exploratory attention and the positive impact on exploitative attention both show a weakening trend. This study reveals the differentiated impact of leader moral ownership on different types of business model innovation, as well as its intermediary mechanisms and boundary conditions, providing new insights for the cross-research of leadership and business model innovation.

Key words: moral ownership, novelty-centered business model innovation, efficiency-centered business model innovation, exploratory attention, exploitative attention