The Consequences of Ethical Leadership in Terms of Employees and Organizations: A Conceptual Examination
Abstract
Today, due to the ethical scandals, the ethical issue and the ethical leadership concept in businesses have started to gain more importance for enterprises. However, the concept and characteristics of ethical leadership are not fully defined in the literature. In addition, there was some confusion in the literature on the structure of the concept in question. The aim of this study is to provide a better understanding of the structure of the ethical leadership concept and to analyze the results of ethical leadership for the organization and employees. In this contexte, national and international literature was first reviewed and by explaining the concept of ethical leadership the confusions of concept is tried to be resolved. Then, the relations of ethical leadership with other concepts are discussed. Therefore, a theoretical model was proposed to synthesize the results of ethical leadership. According to this model, ethical leadership affects employees' job satisfaction, well-being, organizational justice perception, organizational citizenship behavior and organizational commitment directly and positively. At the end of the study, research constraints and suggestions for future studies are included. This research reveals the importance of ethical leadership for both the organization and the employees.
Keywords
Ethical leadership,Job satisfaction,Well-being,Organizational justice,Organizational commitment
References
- Adams, J. S. (1963). Towards an understanding of inequity. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 67(5), 422-436.
- Adams, J. S. (1965). Inequity in social Exchange. In Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 2) In (pp. 267-299). Academic Press.
- Akdoğan, A., ve Demirtaş, Ö. (2014). Etik liderlik davranışlarının etik iklim üzerindeki etkisi: örgütsel politik algılamaların aracı rolü. Afyon Kocatepe Üniversitesi İktisadi ve İdari Bilimler Fakültesi Dergisi, 16(1), 107-124.
- Avey, J. B., Palanski, M. E. and Walumbwa, F. O. (2011). When leadership goes unnoticed: The moderating role of follower self-esteem on the relationship between ethical leadership and follower behavior. Journal of business ethics, 98(4), 573-582.
- Bandura, A. and Walters, R. H. (1986). Social learning theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-hall.
- Blau, P. M. (1964). Exchange and power in social life. New York, NY: Wiley.
- Blunt, P. and Jones, M. L. (1997). Exploring the limits of Western leadership theory in East Asia and Africa. Personnel Review, 26(1/2), 6-23.
- Brown, M. E. and Treviño, L. K. (2006). Ethical leadership: A review and future directions. The leadership quarterly, 17(6), 595-616.
- Brown, M. E., Treviño, L. K. and Harrison, D. A. (2005). Ethical leadership: A social learning perspective for construct development and testing. Organizational behavior and human decision processes, 97(2), 117-134.
- Ciulla, B. J. (2004). Ethics and leadership effectiveness. In J. Antonakis, A. T. Cianciolo and R. J. Sternberg (eds), The nature of leadership, London: Sage 302-327.