The cascading effect of top management's ethical leadership: Supervisors or other lower-hierarchical level individuals (original) (raw)
Related papers
Managerial Ethical Behaviour -A comparative study of ethical behaviours of managers
This paper sets out empirical research on Managerial Ethical Behaviour based at the Bradford Management Centre. The methodology used is described and a comparative study based on data collected in Colombia, Spain, and Britain is presented. The data were collected using, as far as is known for the first time in business ethics research, two techniques borrowed from Organisational Psychology, Critical Incidents and Behaviourally Anchored Rating Scales. 363 managers and employees answered a questionnaire, and 11 senior managers were interviewed to complement the survey data. The will shows how the resulting dimensions and categories found in Managerial Ethical Behaviour are common for the three countries studied, although they differ in order of importance in each country. These similarities and differences in responses across countries is discussed and a tentative conceptual framework that helps to explain the results is put forward.
Humanistic Management Journal
Various organizational factors reported in the hitherto literature affect individual (mis)behaviour within a company. In this paper, we conduct a literature review thereof, and propose a notion of the “Organizational Moral Structure” defined as a comprehensive framework of interrelated organizational factors that condition, incite or influence good or bad moral behaviour of individuals within the organization. Drawing from a wide bibliographical review and our own reflection on recent business scandals, we identify seven constituents of the “Organizational Moral Structure”: 1) leader’s values and character, 2) vision and exercise of power, 3) corporate control systems, 4) internal network of influence, 5) organizational culture, 6) internal and competitive pressures, and 7) external influences. The “Organizational Moral Structure” is proposed as a reflective framework for humanistic management and as an invitation to further research in this field. We provide recommendations on how ...
Ethical Behaviour in Organizations: A Literature Review
Quest Journals Journal of Research in Business and Management, 2016
This article review literature on ethical behavior to identify factors and variables which influences ethical behavior. This study is divided into theoretical and empirical studies and its relevance to theory. Identified variables are divided into individual factors, organizational and external factors. Variables under these factors are locus of control, achievement orientation, Machiavellianism as individual variable. Ethics training, code of ethics and rewarding system are organizational variable. Competition, influence of stakeholders and regulation system are external variables. These studies aim to find out the development of trends from seventies to two thousands fifteen in the studies of ethical behavior. This review provides insights to the future researchers who want to research related to ethical behavior. This review also helps professionals to understand ethical behavior in context of their organization to manage ethical aspects in to their organizations in a better way.
International Journal of Value-based Management, 1998
While practitioner workshops and academic courses on ethics and values have traditionally focused on individual frameworks, discussion of business ethics and values as a field of study within social deviance and management often stresses the important interaction between organizational culture and ethical practices, or context rather than character. However, research on this interaction is limited. This paper reports on a study examining the effect that two antecedents of organizational culture, industry and career systems, have on top executive perceptions of various ethical issues. Two of the top officers in each of fifty-two leading firms covering four service industry sectors were surveyed concerning their firm's career systems and their perceptions of the severity of several ethical problems. Results of the study provide descriptive information on the severity of ethical problems across industry sectors, and suggest that both industry and career systems affect the severity of ethical problems. Implications of this study can be applied to continued research on corporate deviance and managerial efforts to reinforce ethical conduct.
Review of practical implications in ethical leadership studies
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ORGANIZATIONAL LEADERSHIP, 2017
Unfavorable effects of unethical treatments and transactions have been under serious consideration both academically and professionally. The question of how to improve ethical sensitivity in decision-making has begun to attract more and more attention. Thus, professionals have tried to consider developing ethical leadership in their organizations substantially, while scholars have begun to study its possible antecedents and outcomes. Emphasizing practical implications of ethical leadership, this study aims to analyze leaders' behaviors based on their ethical decisions, their adoption level of ethical leadership, the degree that they have integrated ethics into their management styles, and their relations with the followers and subordinates. In this respect, authors investigate ethical leadership studies in top organizational behavior journals and categorize these studies according to their implications. The practical implications of these studies, which are related to ethical leadership, are examined in detail to excerpt a common idea about this specific style of leadership and its consequences in various industries. ©AIMI Journals Recent developments in both external market conditions and internal organizational dynamics showed the importance of business ethics and emphasized the detrimental effects of unethical treatments and transactions. On the one hand, deliberately unethical leadership behaviors are still in common use in all over the world to get short-term material gain regardless of whatever pain the subordinates and others suffer (Mayer, Aquino, Greenbaum, & Kuenzi, 2012). On the other hand, a growing number of conscious entrepreneurs, managers, and researchers believe
Can a leader be seen as too ethical? The curvilinear effects of ethical leadership
The Leadership Quarterly, 2013
Ethical leadership predicts important organizational outcomes such as decreased deviant and increased organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). We argued that due to the distinct nature of these two types of employee behaviors, ethical leadership decreases deviance in a linear manner (i.e., more ethical leadership leading to less deviance), but we expected ethical leadership to reveal a curvilinear relationship with respect to OCB. Specifically, we expected that, at lower levels, ethical leadership promotes OCB. However, at high levels, ethical leadership should lead to a decrease in these behaviors. We also examined a mechanism that explains this curvilinear pattern, that is, followers' perceptions of moral reproach. Our predictions were supported in three organizational field studies and an experiment. These findings offer a better understanding of the processes that underlie the workings of ethical leadership. They also imply a dilemma for organizations in which they face the choice between limiting deviant employee behavior and promoting OCB. Can a leader be seen as too ethical? 3 Can a Leader be Seen as Too Ethical? The Curvilinear Effects of Ethical Leadership Recent ethical failures within organizations such as fraud and corruption highlight the need for ethical leadership. Ethical leadership focuses on leaders as guardians and communicators of ethical standards. Even though there are multiple accounts on ethical leadership, a number of studies have drawn upon Brown and colleagues' (2005) conception of ethical leadership as: "the demonstration of normatively appropriate conduct through personal actions and interpersonal relationships, and the promotion of such conduct to followers through two-way communication, reinforcement, and decision-making" (p. 120). This definition clarifies that ethical leaders act as role models for employees with regard to following procedures or ethical regulations, but they also actively encourage employees to behave in an ethical manner through reward and punishment systems (cf. Treviño, Hartman, & Brown, 2000). These leaders feel obligated to moral and legal rules (De Hoogh & Den Hartog, 2008). Although the scientific literature on ethical leadership is relatively new (e.g. Gini, 1998, Brown et al., 2005), scholars have already provided some clear-cut evidence showing that ethical leaders can reduce deviant employee behaviors and promote
Influence of leaders on their followers: The role of leadership on ethics of employees
Journal of Public Affairs, 2015
The interaction between organizational superiors and their subordinates has a practical implication on the entire organizational life cycle in terms of ethical conduct. This study explores how ethics among public leadership could trickle down on the conduct of public employees by using two empirical cases from developing African countries context. Using the attraction–selection–attrition and social learning models, the study assesses how superiors influence street level bureaucrats’ interaction with clients or customers. Drawing from existing cases and other secondary data, we propose a leadership-ethical diffusion model that argues that subordinates’ perception and experience of superiors’ behavior tend to create a kind of organizational ‘ethical groupthink’, which spans the rank and file of the organization
Measuring and Differentiating Perceptions of Supervisor and Top Leader Ethics
Journal of Business Ethics, 2013
We report the results of two studies that evaluated the perceptions of supervisor and top leader ethics. In our first study, we re-analyzed data from Pelletier and Bligh (J Bus Ethics 67:359-374, 2006) and found that the Perceptions of Ethical Leadership Scale from that study could be used to differentiate perceptions of supervisor and top leader ethics. In a second study with a different sample, we examined the relationships between (1) individual employees' perceptions of top managers' and immediate supervisors' ethical tendencies, and (2) organizational climate, confidence in top leadership direction, commitment, and citizenship behavior. Results indicated that employee perceptions of top managers' and supervisors' ethics were significantly related to climate, top leadership direction, organizational commitment and the OCB dimension, civic virtue.