Ethical Leadership

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Ethical Leadership
From Research to Practice What can we learn
from research?
Tim Hatcher NCSU
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Ethical Leadership is the study of leaders who
are fair and principled decision-makers care
about people and the broader society behave
ethically in their personal and professional
lives
Brown Trevino, 2006
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• Balanced processing
• Moral perspectives
• Relational transparency
• Self-awareness

• Idealized influence
• Inspirational motivation
• Intellectual stimulation
• Individualized consideration

• Vision
• Hope
• Faith
• Altruistic love

Most researched last 20 yrs

• Empathy
• Stewardship
• Healing
• Build community

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• Brief summary of research
• Ethical leadership Trevino (2005) Brown,
  Trevino, Harrison (2005) Hatcher (2002) Ethical
  Leadership Scale Brown Trevino (2002)
• Spiritual leadership Fry (2005)
• CrossCultural ethical leadership - Resick, et al
  (2006)
• Unethical leadership - Price (2007) Einarsen,
  Aasland Skogstad (2007)
• Limited conclusions, e.g., based on survey few
  exp or q-exp limited in verifying
  Cldrshp-Eperf
• Weak measures and theories
• Limited contexts
• Limited generalizability (quant)
  transferability (qual)

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• Implications for research practice
• Theoretical rigor Valid/reliable measures
• Quasi/Experimental Designs
• Vary contexts/participants NFP, NGO, MNC,
  ethnicity, culture, etc
• Leader development around empathy, care and
  community
• Nurture and serve multiple stakeholders (triple
  bottom line)

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• Conclusions
• Ethical leadership is important and an emerging
  research construct
• Related to other positive leadership constructs
  including unethical/destructive leadership
• Need rigorous conceptual and theoretical
  frameworks
• Need rigorous research designs
• Need valid and reliable measures
• Develop research with clear implications for
  practice
• Leadership development should build
  self-awareness, empathy, care, power sharing and
  social responsibility (triple bottom line)

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Ethical Leadership
From Research to Practice What can we learn
from research?
Thanks for listening!
Tim Hatcher tim_hatcher_at_ncsu.edu