Wei, Zhe
Introduction When it comes to ethical leadership, the term can be interpreted from various domains, such as management, economics, sociology or psychology and associated sub-discipline as well as related interdisciplinary field. One of the most widely referenced definitions is provide by Dr. Theresa Watts that ethical leadership is leadership that is directed by respect for ethical beliefs and values and for the dignity and rights of others (Watts, 2008). Researchers in the field of applied psychology define ethical leadership as the demonstration of appropriate conduct through personal actions and relationships and the promotion of such conduct to subordinates through two-way communication, reinforcement, and decision making. Further, Michael E. Brown suggested that traits or concepts such as trust, honesty, consideration, charisma and fairness are also of great importance to perception of ethical leadership (Brown et al., 2005). As ethical leadership is a concept of these complex research fields that are more of human perceptions, it worth investigating a systematic approach, either qualitatively or quantitatively, to effectively evaluate the concept from all aspect. Therefore, a rapid growth of researches can be observed in academic area. However, this essay will first focus on the research methods adopted for ethical leadership evaluation from four research results respectively according to the publication date and then associate leadership criterion with the author’s own style of leadership at the workplace, instead of anatomizing such subject from different point of view.
First of all, Linda Klebe Treviño, Michael Brown and Laura Pincus Hartman conducted an interview-based study aimed at defining the perceived executive ethical leadership (Treviño et al., 2003). This investigation essentially adopts an inductive qualitative research approach. Given the limitations stated in the end of the article, many other aspects still need to be discussed. Although it is difficult to make reservation with these executives or ethics officers, it would be better to enlarge the number of informants rather than merely 40. Moreover, as all of the ethics officers and executives represented large companies from various industries, the variety of the investigation is sound enough, but all of them are from US firms. The lack of diversity from country or culture perspective can easily be observed. Taking gender into account, there are only 5 females from ethics officers, and all of the executives are female. Comparing to the well documented information of gender and working industry, no obvious data on the age range that each person belongs to, which may also affect their perceptions of ethical leadership. All of the above issues are related to the sample itself. Regarding of the telephone interview rather than the face to face one, it may also influence the research results, as half of the executives are reluctant to answer questions about the ethically neutral category. Last, the questions design also need to be carefully analyzed. Though questions from any survey of interview will attempt to keep them less sensitive and less biased, few of them could achieve such expectation especially when it comes to the topic related to ethics.
Second, the rest of the three articles follow a quantitative research methodology. Although the research target varies from one to the other and the researchers of these papers tried to construct model by different criterion or meta-variable and attempt to draw conclusion from firm causal inferences, but none of them succeeded to do so. David, Maribeth and Rebecca exams the link between ethical leadership and employee misconduct (Mayer et al., 2010). They propose a structural model from ethical leadership and employee misconduct and the ethical climate played a mediating role between the former two. Though the rigorous statistics, reliabilities, and correlations among variables are well presented in the research, it is difficult to isolate other variables or factors from the variables within this model. Therefore, the validity of these data remains debatable and let alone a firm causality induction. Kanika T. Bhal and Anubha Dadhich also tried to provide a analytic review on the impact of ethical leadership and leader-member exchange on whistle blowing (Bhal and Dadhich, 2011). The obvious limitation as it is demonstrated at the end of the article is that the study only invited engineers as the respondents, which is quite restrained to a certain group of people that may share the same value or perceptions. Another point worth paying attention to is that some of hypothesis testing are performed by conducting univariate ANOVA (analysis of variance). But the paper neglect demonstrating the detailed approaches to ensure a univariate ANOVA which is of great importance. The paper, ethical leadership: meta-analytic evidence of criterion-related and incremental validity (Ng and Feldman, 2015), shares similar pitfalls. However, it examines a great number of criterion, which is comparatively more extensive than previous two quantitative papers and the meta-analytic data-driven methodology might be an indispensable part of leadership theory and research (Dinh et al., 2014). Another strength of this paper is that it provide a dynamic perspective - incremental validity, which is beyond other leadership styles and context constructs.
To sum up, ethical leadership is of human behavior and human perception related in nature. In real world, it is often exposed under a complex system so that it is impossible to isolate one or two variables or properties and draw a causal result.
Ethical Leadership researches not only have theoretical implications but can also benefit all aspects within organizations or even under a broader social context. Within the corporation, ethical leadership can be perceived from either interpersonal or institutional. From the perspective of interpersonal, I am currently behaving as a leader in supervisor level. My words, attitudes and behaviors can be perceived by followers in the workplace, especially employees just graduated from college. I have to be my best or at least be perceived as charismatic, supportive, match words with deeds and fair. The team will regularly have either formal gathering meeting for problem discussion or informal individual conversation on issues such as professionalism, self-development or pressure management. From the perspective of institutional, companies could establish policies, processes and procedures to emphasize the value of being an ethical employee along the corporate ladder from junior staff to leader or supervisor, or even distant executives. To be more concrete, these policies or procedures could be on one hand proactive prevention such as quarterly or annually integrity training or test and on the other hand afterward respond such as rewards or punishments, to value ethical conducts. However, to what extend that rewards or punishments set worth each corporation’s awareness. Another issue is that ethical issues sometimes come along with crimes if things go extreme, it is of certain unit’s responsibility to identify and check the necessity of judicial intervention rather than corporate level regulatory. Under a broader social context, ethical leadership may influence every employee as well as the community. For instance, executives and the board member from the company I served before will annually carry out events such as green day for waste reuse, senior citizen care or voluntary education support for schools from under developed area. It could strengthen community responsibility from either employees or people around them. It is probably one of the most effective ways that executives could influence common staffs for lack of communication and less perceivable ethical leadership.
The essay presents critical reviews on the provide papers and associate the content of ethical leadership illustrated with self-reflection of my own style of leadership. Though each paper has its strengths and limitations of the research, the practical and managerial implications inspire me to find effective avenue to guide myself to be an ethical leader in corporation.
BHAL, K. T. & DADHICH, A. 2011. Impact of Ethical Leadership and Leader–Member Exchange on Whistle Blowing: The Moderating Impact of the Moral Intensity of the Issue. Journal of Business Ethics, 103, 485-496.
BROWN, M. E., TREVIÑO, L. K. & HARRISON, D. A. 2005. Ethical leadership: A social learning perspective for construct development and testing. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 97, 117-134.
DINH, J. E., LORD, R. G., GARDNER, W. L., MEUSER, J. D., LIDEN, R. C. & HU, J. 2014. Leadership theory and research in the new millennium: Current theoretical trends and changing perspectives. The Leadership Quarterly, 25, 36-62.
MAYER, D. M., KUENZI, M. & GREENBAUM, R. L. 2010. Examining the Link Between Ethical Leadership and Employee Misconduct: The Mediating Role of Ethical Climate. Journal of Business Ethics, 95, 7-16.
NG, T. W. H. & FELDMAN, D. C. 2015. Ethical leadership: Meta-analytic evidence of criterion-related and incremental validity. Journal of Applied Psychology, 100, 948-965.
TREVIÑO, L. K., BROWN, M. & HARTMAN, L. P. 2003. A Qualitative Investigation of Perceived Executive Ethical Leadership: Perceptions from Inside and Outside the Executive Suite. Human Relations, 56, 5-37.
WATTS, T. 2008. Business Leaders' Values and Beliefs Regarding Decision Making Ethics, Lulu. com.