Promoting ethical follower behaviour through leadership of ethics: the development and psychometric evaluation of the Ethical Leadership Inventory (ELI) (original) (raw)
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South African Journal of Business Management
The Centre of Leadership Studies developed a model that defines and describes leadership behaviour required for creating an ethical and high performing organisation. Purposefully building an ethical organisational environment is a prerequisite for ethical organisational behaviour. To be an ethical high performance leader, a person must be both an effective leader and a leader of ethics. The purpose of this study is to develop a 360° instrument that can be used to assess the quality of ethical leadership of middle, senior and executive managers in public, private and not-for-profit organisations. The results reported here provide reasonable support for the use of the ELI. The possibility of causal influences existing amongst specific first-order leadership dimensions, however, needs to be investigated.
Ethical Leadership: A Drive to Success
2019
Recent failure ofethical practices in the organizations shifted the focus of organization towards ethicality and ethical leadership (EL). The question that needed consideration is which factors contribute to the advent and maintenance of EL. This study aims to, firstly identify contextual factor that can influence EL emergence and maintenance. Ethical Culture (EC) based on literature and theory was identified as potential antecedent of ethical leadership. Secondly, it intends to develop and further test a research framework consisting of EC dimensions as antecedents of ethical leadership and employee performance as an outcome. A sample consisted of 369 personnelemployed in varioushospitalslocated in the area of Rawalpindi/Islamabad. Hypotheses formulated in the study were supported by the results.
2014
This study arose from a high need to determine the factors contributing to leader effectiveness in South African organisations by identifying the determinants thereof. The purpose of the study furthermore was to identify the determinants of unethical and counterproductive behaviours in the workplace. There is a belief that leaders should set aside ethical standards to succeed in the rough-and-tumble world of business. In contrast, evidence has revealed that ethical leaders can frequently be seen as more effective in organisations. Since the purpose of this study was to examine factors contributing to perceived leader effectiveness within South African organisations, the relationship between perceived effective leadership, ethical climate, organisational justice, ethical leadership and core ethical values was investigated. The aim was to provide further theoretical and empirical evidence that effective ethical leadership can be realised through instilling an ethical organisational climate in which integrity, altruism and fairness are exhibited and encouraged. A theoretical model was developed to explain the structural relationships between the latent variables and effective leadership within organisations. Substantive hypotheses were formulated in order to determine the validity of the propositions made in the literature review, with the objective of testing the proposed ethical climate structural model. The sample was selected from of employees of a large retail company mainly situated in the Western Cape but with branches all over South Africa and in the rest of Africa. The selection consisted of 224 first-line and middle management employees. Each of the respondents completed the Leader Effectiveness Questionnaire (LEQ), the Ethical Climate Scale (ECS), the Justice Scale, the Leadership of Ethics Scale (LES), the Revised Behavioural Integrity Scale (BIS-R) and Langley's Value Scale. The hypotheses and the structural model were empirically tested using various statistical methods. Reliability analysis was completed on all the measurement scales and satisfactory reliability was found. The content and structure of the measured constructs were examined by means of confirmatory factor analysis and the results indicated that good fit was achieved for all the refined measurement models. Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) was subsequently used to determine the extent to which the conceptual model fitted the data obtained from the sample and to test the relationships between the constructs. The results revealed that integrity and altruism have a direct and positive influence on ethical leadership. Support furthermore was found for the influence of ethical climate on leader effectiveness. The results however indicated that support could not be found for the relationship between Stellenbosch University http://scholar.sun.ac.za 4.3.1 Reliability analysis: Leadership Effectiveness Questionnaire .
The Leadership Quarterly, 2011
This paper describes the development and validation of the multi-dimensional Ethical Leadership at Work (ELW) questionnaire. Based on theory, interviews and a student sample, we developed seven ethical leader behaviors (fairness, integrity, ethical guidance, people orientation, power sharing, role clarification, and concern for sustainability). We then tested the factor structure in two employee samples (first common-source, EFA; next multi-source, CFA). To establish construct validity we related ethical leader behaviors to other leadership styles and employee attitudes in Study 1. The expected pattern of relationships emerged, e.g., positive relationships with satisfaction and commitment, and negative ones with cynicism. The results suggest that the ELW scales have sound psychometric properties and good construct validity. In Study 2, using a multi-source sample, the ELW behaviors explained variance in trust, OCB, and leader and follower effectiveness beyond a uni-dimensional measure of ethical leadership. Ethical leadership was also related to OCB (supervisor-rated). Employees who rate their leader higher on power sharing and fairness show more OCB. Taken together, the results suggest that the ELW is a useful new multidimensional measurement tool that can help further our understanding of the antecedents and consequences of ethical leadership.
Leadership has a moral and ethical aspect. Ethical leadership is not only important because it leads to financial and strategic success for organizations, because it's the right thing for the greater good. Ethical Leaders analyze the decision making process firstly in terms of the long term implications and consequences, and thinking to incorporate the value system in the decision making process and making the process more viable and beneficial for the corporation and people. An ethical leader embodies the purpose and value of the company, people or society in which he/she works. An ethical leader stands out from the crowd and maintains strong ethics in professional and personal matters. An ethical leader performs best of his ability and enthuse energy to the subordinates to do the same. An ethical leader is open to all, honest and ready to face all kinds of situations and deal with all kinds of people. Ethical leaders led by examples and influence others and enthuse consistent energy to the subordinates that remains morally focused, determined and forthright. There are five pillars of ethical leadership namely, commitment, relevance, positive value, influence, and means -not ends. Ethical leaders also need to invest a lot of time in strategy, in working out how to get there. The ethical leaders have good at behaviour, respects others in organisation, transparent and fairness in working, ethical working behaviour, high standard for oneself and others. They work within the set of standard of behaviour and role model for their subordinates and influence by their sets of values through their work. They create an open conversation and working practice that encourages the sharing of ideas, knowledge and vision so that the benefits of the learning are shared. The paper examines the current ethical perspective of leadership. The purpose of this paper is to shed light on the construct of ethical leadership by reviewing the relevant literature. The aims of the paper include providing definitions for the construct of ethical leadership and describing an ethical leader's personality. Furthermore, the paper evaluates the major determinants of leader's ethical behavior in a modern organization. The research questions of the paper include: what are major personality characteristics of an ethical leader and what is his typical behavior? What is the leader's role in fostering followers' ethical behavior and how do followers perceive an ethical leader? This paper also provides the results from scarce empirical studies about ethical leaders and the followers' perception of ethical dimension in leaders. The structure of the paper reflects the purpose and follows the research questions.
Components of Ethical Leadership and Their Importance in Sustaining Organizations Over the Long Term
Journal of Values-Based Leadership, 2018
This article identifies components of ethical leadership and then aligns them with the style of leadership that includes them. The importance of such an article comes at a time when ethical practices or lack thereof seems to be increasingly prevalent in many organizations' execution of their business practices. These organizations quite often have an ethics statement outlining required behavior of employees and tout their commitment to employees, society, and the customer, yet we continue to see major infractions of these codes of ethics. All this comes at a high financial cost to organizations. In order to avoid such fines, and damage to brand equity, we propose ethical components which must permeate the organization to ensure appropriate behavior which neither breaks legal requirements, disengages the employee, or alienates the customer.
A Review of Ethical Leadership and Other Ethics- Related Leadership Theories
The role of ethics in leadership studies is very important for organizations. Leadership without ethics and integrity can be harmful both for the organizational stakeholders and society. The high-profiled scandals and the leadership involvement in unethical activities caused increase attention of the scholars and mainstream media in the leadership ethics (Hartog, 2015). This resulted a growing research in the field of ethical leadership behavior. For this reason, the present study review ethics-related leadership including ethical leadership and other ethic-related leadership theories to better understand the importance of the ethics and morality in these leadership constructs. This study also presented a comprehensive review on ethical leadership and its similarities and differences with other related leadership styles. Another focus of this study was to present the definitions of each leadership style and their scales, and to establish that how ethical leadership is distinct from each leadership style. Future directions and conclusion are presented in the last of the paper.
Ethical Leadership : Best Practice for Success
2014
In the contemporary value based society ethics plays an important role in all spheres of life. Corporate houses are no exceptions to it. The ethical scandals in business raised questions about the role of leadership and ethical conducts and shaken the public confidence on business organizations. At this juncture, the concept of ethical leadership is getting popularity and prominence. Leaders, if ethical brings tremendous business impacts .In contrast, if the ethical ways of leading is not practiced it spoils the whole image of the business. That‘s why Ethical Leadership should be a concern for today‘s organizations not only for better organizational performance but also to sustain competitive advantage. The concept of ethical leadership is not confined only to philosophical literature rather in today‘s business environment it is imperative and a weapon to reach the pinnacle of success. This paper is an attempt to give a comprehensive review of the concept of ethical leadership, the ...