Understanding and awareness of ethical issues have been referred to in various studies as one of the attributes of an ethical leader [3, 20, 22, 33, 34]. Furthermore, the ability to differentiate between ethical and unethical cases has also been confirmed in other studies as part of ethical sensitivity [4, 5, 7, 35, 36]. Kim et al. believe ethical sensitivity requires insight, intuition, and moral knowing, and an ability to identify moral issues in various situations[9]. On the other hand, participants believed that ethical leaders adhere to ethical principles and values such as honesty, confidentiality and justice.
In nutshell, the authors’ main aim of the research article was to examined the antecedents and the path forward of ethical leadership. Therein, they want to understand why there has been a positive and negative organizational process of ethical leadership. The authors came up with three points of terminology as a way to understand the ethical leadership. They term these as personality traits. These traits defined and are as follow: a. Conscientiousness is related to high degree of moral obligation.
Ethical leaders As we see changes in the way of policing, ethical leadership and behavior is becoming more challenging for law enforcement officers. Police officers should be ethical leaders committed to the law and professional standards. Police officers with ethical leadership posses a philosophical moral foundation and his/her actions and decisions will be based on that; many officers may face challenges or difficulties while trying to adapt to the new way of policing, especially when working with unethical peers. With this being said there are specific characteristics in addition to strong ethical and moral values that can successful develop ethical leaders. Ethics and Morals Ethical leaders must possess strong ethical and moral values.
Recent scandals in government, business, sport and even religious organisations have reaffiliated the importance of ethical leaders in our current day and age. Brown, Treviño and Harrison (2005) summarised ethical leaders as people who are considerate, truthful, principled individuals. They are balanced and fair decision makers who set clear ethical standards and communicate openly with their followers. Finally, they are proactive role models for ethical conduct as their deeds reflect their own ethical principles and values. Social learning theory maintains that most individuals learn and mimic credible role models (Kohlberg, 1969; Treviño, 1986) and it is upon this theory which Brown and Treviño (2006) motivate that ethical leaders are the most likely sources of guidance because of their overall behaviour.
Why is ethical leadership more important than ethical codes of conduct? Some people may think that ethics code of conduct is enough to create an ethical organization. Code of conduct does not enough to create ethical organzation because of the nature of the relationship between leaders and followers. First premise, leaders influence followers. They can affect followers’ lives either negatively or positively.
y examined how leaders in the public sector utilize the principles of social learning to be intentional in shaping employees’ ethical conduct. This proposed study examined how leaders can help employees to attend to, retain, recall, and imitate a leader’s ethical behavior in the workplace. The literature review covered leadership to include ethical leadership, as well as the consequences of unethical leadership. In order to understand how a leader can intentionally shape the behavior of employees, it is necessary to discuss a theoretical framework to be used as the basis for this study. Social learning theory has been used in many leadership studies in the context of the workplace (Tittle, Antonaccio, & Botchkovar, 2012).
The study of problematic triad of leadership has been an eye opener for me this semester. I had always thought of bad leadership with regards to politics. That demotivated me in engaging in productive leadership discussion and issues. But this course provided a new expanded platform for leadership discussions making everyday issues like ethics, rights and duties and the rule of law, its base. The role of ethics in defining leadership can never be underestimated.
Due to this inherent challenge associated with ethical issues, each profession i.e. medicine, law, engineering and business, has arrived at their own ethical standards that govern conduct. Hence, the author defines ethics, ‘as a method, procedure, or perspective for deciding how to act and for analysing complex problems and issues.’ As a specialised discipline, ‘Research Ethics’ has also formulated a set of principles, policies and procedures that guide conduct for researchers. These principles focus on honestly reporting data and analysis, ensuring objectivity in design, implementation and evaluation of research projects, upholding integrity and confidentiality for research subjects, and ensuring that benefits and burdens are shared evenly across relevant stakeholders. These ethical norms in research are extremely important because
Thus make being an ethical leader slightly harder than a normal ethical person. So, we must take a deep interest in this topic. Having to know the traits that describe ethical or unethical leadership will make us more careful in acting as a leader, or choosing someone as a leader. Of course we don’t want an unethical leadership or being an unethical leadership. Because the effects or consequences is not only on us, but to others, especially those who work under the
Ethics according to my understanding is that division of philosophy which concerns with the moral principles that guide us in terms of our behaviour and way of doing things. Ethics simply helps a person in distinguishing between the right and wrong, good and bad, just and unjust, acceptable and unacceptable. It incorporates the ethical standards or the code of ethics guiding a person into the right path by instilling discipline and other virtues in our life’s daily activities. As professional teachers we endowed with dignity and reputation with high code of conduct while practicing the noble teaching profession which also requires us to follow set of ethical and moral principles, standards and values. Ethics in education concerns with the study of ethical standards or basic principles related rooted in the education system.