Chapter 13 Ethical, Servant, Spiritual, and Authentic Leadership

Explanation of Values Emphasized in Theories of Ethical Leadership

1. Integrity 2. Altruism 3. Humility 4. Empathy and Healing 5. Personal Growth 6. Fairness and Justice 7. Empowerment

Guidelines for Ethical Leadership

1. Set clear standards of ethical conduct 2. Model ethical behavior in your own actions 3. Help people find fair and ethical ways to resolve problems and conflicts 4. Oppose unethical practices in the organization 5. Implement and support programs to promote ethical behavior

Ethical Leadership Influence process

1. creating enthusiasm for a risky strategy or project 2. inducing followers to change their underlying belief and values 3. influencing decisions that will benefit some people at the expense of others.

Influencing expectations

An important leadership responsibility is to interpret confusing events and build consensus around the strategies of dealing with threats and opportunities. Sometimes success requires a strategy or project that is bold and innovative

Personal Integrity and Ethical Leadership

Discussions of ethical leadership involve the concept of personal integrity. As noted in chapter 6, integrity is an attribute that helps to explain leadership effectiveness. In cross-cultural research on essential traits for effective leadership, integrity is near the top of the list in all cultures that have been studied.

Situational Influences on Ethical Leadership

Ethical behavior occurs in a social context, and it can be strongly influenced by aspects of the situation. A dynamic, uncertain environment and a lack of strong regulation by government may encourage more risky decisions and illegal activities to improve financial performance. The formal reward system can encourage and support ethical or unethical behavior by leaders and members.

Individual Determinants of Ethical Leadership

Ethical leadership is related to a leader's personality traits and needs. Most of the traits related to effective leadership are also related to ethical leadership. Unethical, abusive leadership is more likely for a person who has low conscientiousness, high neuroticism, high narcissism, and a personalized power orientation. Emotionally mature leaders with a socialized power orientation, a high level of cognitive moral development, and a strong moral identity are more likely to resist temptation to use their power to exploit others.

Influencing Values and Beliefs

Even more controversial is an attempt to change the underlying values and beliefs of individual followers. Some writers contend that this type of leader influence is clearly unethical, even when the intended outcome is to benefit followers as well as organizations.

Kohlberg (1984)

He proposed a model describing how people progress though six sequential stages of moral development as they grow from a child to an adult. With each successive stage, the person develops a broader understanding of principles of justice, social responsibility, and human rights.

Heifetz (1994)

His proposal is important to help people understand a problem without demoralizing them. Effective leaders do not dwell too much upon the risks or obstacles, but instead emphasize what can be accomplished with concerted, shared effort.

Servant Leadership

In 970, Robert Greenfeaf proposed the concept of "servant leadership" that is the service to followers is the primary responsibility of leaders and the essence of ethical leadership. Servant leadership in the workplace is about helping others to accomplish share objectives by facilitating individual development, empowerment, collective work that is consistent with the health and long-term welfare of followers.

Ethical Leadership

It has been defined in many different ways. When asked to describe ethical leaders in one study, executives identified several behaviors, values, and motives. A key characteristic was leader's efforts to influence the ethical behavior of others

Consequences of Ethical and Unethical Leadership

Most theories of ethical leadership emphasize the importance of leader influence on follower and ethical climate of an organization. Abusive supervision includes using power and authority to humiliate, ridicule, bully, and otherwise mistreat subordinates. Such behavior is usually regarded as a form of unethical leadership. In research of ethical leadership, consequences are often assessed for employees rather than for measures of organizational performance. Conversely, some decisions and actions that improve short-term organizational performance will have adverse consequences for employees or customers.

Multiple Stakeholders and Competing Values

The difficulties in evaluating the effectiveness of leaders include multiple criteria with complex trade-offs with partially conflicting interests. The diverse consequences of a leader's decision and actions complicate the evaluation of ethical leadership. It is more difficult to evaluate ethical leadership when stakeholders have incompatible preferences.

Comparison to Transformational and Charismatic Leadership

The ethical leadership theories have more emphasis on leader values than on leader behavior, and more emphasis on consequences for stakeholders on enhancement of subordinate motivation and performance. For charismatic and transformational theories, these priorities are reversed.

Spiritual Leadership

This type of leadership describes how leaders can enhance the intrinsic motivation of followers by creating conditions that increase their sense of spiritual meaning in the work. The definition of spirituality provided by Fry (2003, 2005) includes two essential elements to a person's life. Transcendence of self is manifest in a sense of "calling" or destiny, and the belief that one's activities, including work, have meaning and value beyond being instrumental for economic benefits such as need for power, achievement, and esteem.

Authentic Leadership

This type of leadership is based on positive psychology and psychological theories of self-regulation. The theory attempts to integrate earlier ideas about effective leadership with concerns for ethical leadership. They have core values such as honesty, altruism, kindness, fairness, accountability, and optimism