Which theory includes the largest number of influence processes and follower characteristics?

Infusing ethical considerations, processes, and behaviors into the structure and everyday practice of leading an organization has received considerable attention from sociologists and other researchers over the last two decades or so. Many journal articles and research studies refer to ethical leadership. Many others refer to moral leadership. While these two ideas are not synonymous, it’s understandable that several of the principles of both theories overlap with each other and with the skills, traits, and behaviors associated with other leadership theories. In this review of mostly recent applicable literature, I will examine the basic assumptions and theoretical background of ethical leadership, comparing and contrasting Ethical Leadership Theory to other theories. I will then synthesize the common themes regarding ethical leadership into a cohesive theoretical model before attempting to uncover the skills, traits, and behaviors that seem to be most significant in ethical leadership and the relationships and interactions by which leaders influence the people and systems that comprise their organizations.

Ethics vs. Morals

In some ways, morals guide ethical thinking. Culture largely dictates the mores of any society and the specific actions, thoughts, or behaviors that are generally agreed upon by people in that society to be right or wrong, or more precisely to lie along a spectral plane that spans the distance from obviously virtuous in all situations to obviously harmful in all situations. Ethics, meanwhile, are a particular system of moral principles that govern people and their interactions with others. Saying someone is moral might imply they accept or believe the things their society, in general, considers to be virtuous or harmful. If there is a strong religious influence in the society, the person might associate right and wrong with the moral dictates of religious authority in whatever form it takes. Saying someone is an ethical professional usually goes a step further to suggest that they have incorporated moral guidelines or values into their considerations and interactions within the context of their organization. 

There is admittedly ambiguity between the terms “ethical” and “moral” and it can be difficult to fashion a definition of one or the other that does not either become circular in explaining each through the other or invite a devil’s advocate to provide a myriad of exceptional situations. The general acceptance of morals and ethical values is already by nature dependent upon agreement of ambiguous groups (or at minimum dyads), so it’s not a stretch to say that every individual’s moral or ethical code may be unique. Suffice it to say, however, that the further one’s personal morals or ethics stray from the norm, the less likely he or she is to be considered a moral or ethical leader by observers within an organization. While the articles I reviewed on ethics often mention individual morals, they focus more on the governing systems in place within the organization than they do on right or wrong. This is a particularly important clarification for leaders of the organization, because the moral character of leaders is more primal in its antecedents and development while the ethical character of leaders is somewhat secondary because it is built in relationship to the organization’s employees.

Ethical Systems of Leadership

Brown and Treviño (2006, p. 579) confirm a link between being observed as an ethical leader by others and the personal characteristics of being honest, fair, and trustworthy as well as possessing integrity and having altruistic motivation. They name these characteristics the moral person aspect of leadership, distinguishable from more work-related displays of ethical behavior (moral manager aspect) such as modeling ethical behavior, expecting and rewarding it from others by holding them accountable, and communicating an ethics and values message that sets a higher standard than ethical neutrality in organizations. The authors cite social learning as the key foundational theory that explains the antecedents and outcomes of ethical leadership and illustrates how ethical leaders influence their organizations. In the theory, people learn by observing and emulating attitudes and values of attractive and credible models. Status and power help enhance the attractiveness and credibility of ethical leaders, but observers seem to acknowledge that ethical leaders are different from other leaders based on the observed characterizes above and consistent ethical communications, thus tend to rate them higher for having fairer practices and decision-making skills or policies and for abusing their power less than other leaders. Social exchange theory, meanwhile, describes the relationship wherein employees come to value the ethical behavior of leaders because it adds stability and value to their own efforts and self-efficacy. “A fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay” is often an exchange that employees are very willing to make. When ethical leaders consistently show that following the ethical behaviors they model will be rewarded, there is an inherent quid pro quo relationship that directly relates to employee loyalty, satisfaction, and self-worth (p. 607).

Social learning theory also adds understanding of what goes into creating and identifying ethical leaders. According to the theory, people rely on models built on personally and vicariously observed instances to model appropriate behavior within organizations. If an employee has seen or been influenced by ethical leaders, they are more likely to develop ethical leadership characteristic of their own (p. 600). Therefore, there is a situational aspect of ethical leadership whereby it is enforced or contradicted by each instance where it is observed or absent. These instances tend to support the development and maintenance of ethical culture within the organization (p. 601). Brown and Treviño write: “When the potential for great harm exists, observers will pay attention to the decision-maker to see how he or she handles the situation,” (p. 602).  Employees particularly focus attention and attach saliency when the instances have big consequences while ethical leaders tend to consider the fallout their own actions will have on others.

Walumbwa and colleagues (2011) agree with Brown, Treviño, and other researchers that ethical leadership is consistent with social exchange theory and social learning theory. They add social identity theory as another defining system underlying ethical leadership and suggest three types of mediators regarding the relationship of ethical systems to performance: Leader–member exchange (LMX), self-efficacy, and identification of employees with their organizations (pp. 2-3). Social identity theory implies that, not only do people tend to exhibit behavior similar to their ethical models and derive value from those relationships, but the ethical nature of the organization becomes a stronger part of their own personal identity (p. 17). This is the basis of identification as a mediator and also helps explain the connection between self-efficacy and performance as organizational tasks and goals become more personal to employees. After studying their results, the authors confidently conclude that employees are likely to put forth more effort and enhance their performance once strong LMX, self-efficacy, and identification are achieved (p. 18).

Schaubroeck and colleagues (2012) focus a research study of military leadership on two primary structures – ethical cognitions and ethical behaviors – that lead to creation of more or less of an ethical culture within subgroups comprised of lower-level leaders directly subordinate to the primary leader and the units these subordinate leaders command. They write that senior leaders can influence the ethical conduct of others within the reach of their command by embedding expectations and assumptions into observable manifestations of ethical culture. Culture is defined as “a system of shared assumptions that can have a strong influence in directing followers’ behaviors and beliefs,” (p. 1054). Leading ethically, therefore, is intentional thought and behavior meant to influence others through both direct and indirect impacts (p. 1074). Creation of an ethical culture which reflected the ethical expectations and desires of the leaders was found to be the most potent and proximal influence on follower cognitions and behavior (p. 1076).

Skills Associated with Ethical Theory

The enumeration of skills associated with strong leaders dates back to Robert Katz (1955), who suggests skills are more useful than traits or characteristics to identify effective leaders based not on what good executives are, but rather on what they do (the skills they exhibit in carrying out their jobs effectively). Katz breaks skills into technical skills, conceptual skills, and human skills. Technical skills imply understanding of, and proficiency in, specific methods, processes, procedures, or techniques (p. 34). Training in these skills, which can be added and practiced through time, is particularly important to Katz at lower levels of management which directly oversee personnel (p. 37). Conceptional skills, particularly important at higher levels of management, involve the ability of an executive to see an enterprise as a whole and recognizing how various functions of the organization are interconnected. They require visualizing the organization’s relationship to the industry, community, and political, social, and economic forces (pp. 35-36). Human skills are important at all management levels. They involve an executive's ability to work effectively as a group member and to build cooperative effort within the team he or she leads (p. 40). Human skills represent a classic precursor to more recent relational theories of leadership including emotional intelligence because these skills presumably develop into natural, continuous activities that involve sensitivity at times of crucial decision making as well as in day-to-day behavior.

About 45 years later, Mumford and colleagues (2000) made further observations about leadership skills. Like Schaubroeck’s team, they used the military as a test group because of its uniform organizational structures. The authors focus on conceptual skills because “leadership ultimately depends on one’s capability to formulate and implement solutions to complex (i.e., novel, ill-defined) social problems. Solving these problems depends, in turn, on a complex set of skills and the availability of requisite knowledge,” (p. 26). They determine it takes approximately 7-to-10 years or longer for appropriate skills to develop and that this process trumps intelligence, technical knowledge, or other seemingly requisite capabilities associated with high levels of cognition (p. 24). They also note that context matters and that effective leaders must attack the right problems in the right way while exercising influence judiciously (p. 26). This study reveals how complicated it can be to justify the connection of specific skills to effective organizational outcomes. Mumford and a new group of colleagues (2017) recently identified nine skills considered to be important factors when found in a particular hypothesized sequence (see Table 1).

While not specifically identified with ethical leadership, the process of implementing the nine skills in any organization appears that it would benefit from an ethical approach to leadership based on the mutual benefits of both systems. A morally neutral problem definition is not as likely to increase the awareness and saliency of the problem among the employees as a moral one that invokes the sense of right, the effect on personal relationships, and the sense of self identity that frames the problem in relation to how it directly affects the employee. Likewise down the line, constraints, goals, and causes are all likely to become more deeply emotionally charged through ethical leadership. Devotion to planning, forecasting, and idea evaluation, which can often become tedious tasks, is more likely to be tied to the ethical, exchange, and identity value that employees can extract. Certainly creativity, wisdom, and sensemaking all have explicit roles in ethical problem solving. Moreover, Katz’ traditional technical, conceptual, and human skills all dovetail with the development of ethical leaders as they contribute to the credibility of the leader. Human skills, particularly, are necessary for ethical leaders to enhance self-efficacy and identity among employees. Conceptual skills complement the leader’s development and maintenance of ethical culture while technical skills learned by leaders increase the benefits of LMX to the employees as well as their likely respect and loyalty for the leaders. Scandura (1999) notes that LMX is always measured along a continuum, so employees will interpret the interactional justice of any exchange, whether intentional or not (p. 33-34). Ethical application of LMX should contribute to the overall sense of organizational justice observed by employees.

Traits Associated with Ethical Theory

In early scientific leadership research of the first half of the 20th century, easily observable traits of successful leaders dominated the literature. Eventually, more sophisticated theories began to integrate innate traits and attributes with meaningful relations and interactions (Zaccaro, 2007, p.6). However, a leader’s traits are undeniably connected in some ways to his or her success (or at least potential for success) as a leader. Zaccaro found that leaders’ trait patterns sometimes result in immediate impact on employee satisfaction, behavior, and performance. At other times, they have a more distal influence on processes and long-term organizational effectiveness (pp. 13-14).

According to Zaccaro, trait approaches were popular in the initial decades of scientific leadership research (until 1940s-50s), but this led to criticism that traits alone could not necessarily distinguish between leaders and non-leaders (p. 6). He argues that a leader’s traits do reveal a lot about their leadership, but a more sophisticated view integrates traits and attributes in conceptually meaningful ways. Derue and colleagues (2011) comprehensively reviewed leadership literature to find that individuals who have high evaluations in the traits conscientiousness and extraversion are more likely to be evaluated as effective leaders and those who possess conscientiousness and agreeableness can be linked to higher group performance evaluations (pp. 40-41). The authors develop an extremely complex causal model that links leadership traits in four areas – tasks, relationships, change, and passive leadership – to behaviors those leaders exhibit and then to associated measures of organizational performance.

One specific traits-based approach that encompasses relationships and interactions common to successful leaders is captured by Kotze ́ and Venter (2011) in the form of “emotional intelligence”. The authors and other researchers have attempted to quantify a leader’s innate ability to handle the emotional load of leading through an emotional intelligence quotient (EQ as opposed to IQ for “intelligence quotient”). They state that high EQ is negatively correlated to poor judgement. It also may help leaders manage group or interpersonal conflicts and get people to work together more effectively. Obtaining a high EQ requires that leaders be competent at creating vision for the groups they lead, building a culture of share values, and providing appropriate levels of support and feedback. The authors suggest this leadership approach can lead to employees or followers not only meeting, but often exceeding work requirements (pp. 398-399).

The actual definition of EQ seems to vary among researchers (since it gained popularity as a term around 2005). One measurement, the EQI, consists of 133 items on a 5-point Likers scale, so it may inadvertently include not only traits, but behaviors, skills, and subjective qualities that do not easily fit into one category or another (expression, coping mechanisms, relationships, etc.). The crux of EQ measurements is an attempt to quantify all the ways in which a leader is able to “monitor one’s own feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them, and to use this information to guide one’s thinking,” (p. 401). Kotze ́ and Venter identify the following factors hypothesized to comprise EQ. (Factors determined to be statistically significant in the research are bold):

Like Zacarro’s findings, it appears that some EQ traits are associated with universally beneficial outcomes when all other factors are kept equal and a leader is able to put this inward awareness to work. It is logical that optimistic leaders are preferable in most circumstances to leaders who cannot naturally motivate or calm others in the face of adversity. Stress tolerance seems to apply in a similar fashion, while innate problem-solving abilities make a leader more flexible and able to adapt in many situations.  Self-actualization, social responsibility, and empathy are all positive personal traits that may be beneficial for leaders who need to relate on personal level with others in order to maximize employee buy-in, effort, trust, or other interpersonal/intrapersonal cognitions and behaviors. It is also no surprise that the factors that prove to be confirmed by the research as important traits within a leader’s innate character start to resemble the more nuanced, complicated relationships explored in theories regarding behaviors and leadership styles. In the end, however, traits alone seem doomed to provide an insufficient picture of how a leader interacts with others in his or her organization. Zaccaro writes, “Leadership represents complex patterns of behavior, likely explained, in part, by multiple leader attributes, and trait approaches to leadership need to reflect this reality,” (p. 6). If traits are only one part of the picture, perhaps the skills that leaders develop through experience and pass on through systems of training and leadership may represent another.

Revisiting the relationship between the findings on leadership traits and the theoretical basis of ethical leadership, it’s interesting to note that at least one EQ variable is significant in each of Kotze ́ and Venter’s four categories of EQ traits (intra-personal, interpersonal, adaptability, and general mood). Arguably, self-actualization is the intra-personal EQ trait most associated with ethical leadership. Assertiveness, self-regard, and independence might be important to the leader as an individual, but as an ethical leader, it’s more important that the leader has developed a self-actualized personality and is fully available to expend energy and cognition on supporting employees and building relationships, visions, and mutually beneficial exchanges. Problem-solving not only shows that a leader is adaptable to novel situations and exhibits flexibility, but also results in real-life LMX benefits for employees that buy into the leadership and has distal influence on the problem-solving capabilities of all employees and other leaders within the organization based on social learning and social identity theories. Similar statements can be made regarding the other significant variables (empathy, social responsibility, and optimism). Each of these variables has implications for creation of ethical culture based on possessing and modeling these traits. Happiness, the mood-related variable that did not prove to be significant, is more difficult to sustain and measure than optimism. In high-performance organizational environments, ethical leaders should be able to promote and maintain group member optimism about the expected results of their collective work because they have optimistic models, processes, and communications that stress optimism through time as well as identities that have been shaped with optimism as a driver. Happiness, on the other hand, is not always modeled, communicated, or engrained in identity and is known to fluctuate on a regular basis.

Behaviors Associated with Ethical Theory

Bowers and Seashore (1966) provide a convenient review of a litany of leadership theories that lay the foundation of modern managerial leadership. Many of these early theories have a basis in behavioral methods of promoting effectiveness of a work force. For instance, the authors’ four factors of leadership are related to Likert’s five conditions of supervisory behavior. The four factors involve behavior in these areas:

1. Support. Behavior that enhances someone else's feeling of personal worth and importance.

2. Interaction facilitation. Encouraging group members to develop close, mutually satisfying relationships.

3. Goal emphasis. Stimulating enthusiasm for meeting the group's goal or achieving excellent performance.

4. Work facilitation. Achieving goal attainment by scheduling, coordinating, planning, and providing resources such as tools, materials, and technical knowledge (p. 247). 

Likert, likewise, suggests developing supporting relationships, interactive work groups, loyalty to these groups, high-performance goals, employee-centered supervisors, technical competence, group decision-making, and group coordination, scheduling, and planning (pp. 245-246). Some of these aspects may seem like traits at first glance, but they become behaviors because they are consciously activated by the leader within the organizational setting by the things the leader says and does. If the leader simply has potential based on his or her traits to implement all of these beneficial systems, structures, and policies but does not, in fact, implement them, then Likert or Bowers and Seashore would not likely expect the benefits in terms of culture and output effectiveness that they might expect from leaders who exhibit these successful behaviors. 

Bowers and Seashore point out other contributions that help to additionally sort out the behavioral theory of their time or clarify it. For instance, they credit Cartwright & Zander with separating these behaviors into either group maintenance functions or goal-achievement functions (p. 244). The former would involve more human relations activities while the latter might involve more traditional business tasks. Examples of group maintenance functions include resolving disputes, providing encouragement, giving minority voices a chance to be heard, stimulating self-direction, and building member interdependence. Examples of goal-achievement functions include keeping member attention on goals, developing procedural plans, evaluating employees or product quality, and seeking out expert information or other resources. Additionally, they credit Kahn’s supervisory functions (providing direct need satisfaction; structuring path to goal attainment; enabling goal achievement; and modifying goals) with tying in the satisfaction of employees and performance measurements with the interactive group structures built by the intentional behaviors of organizational leaders (p. 244). 

Behavior theories tend to include more intricate frameworks, including moderating, intervening, and contingency-based factors, than theories of leadership skills or traits. This makes sense because power dynamics, strength of interpersonal relationships, and other similar factors that can be difficult to measure will all have an impact on outcomes in behavior theories. If researchers are more concerned with the inherent traits or learned skills of leaders, the emphasis shifts to the capabilities of the individual leaders rather than the nuanced relationships between leaders and followers. Leadership is complicated, so behavior theory lends itself to a more thorough, dynamic understanding of the topic, but it also adds risk that particular research studies or proposed models will not have enough external validity to become relevant to leadership theory on a larger scale.

A study by Katz & Kahn observing 40 individually owned life-insurance sales agencies with only 2 or 3 levels of managerial hierarchy illustrates just how complex the leadership relationships become even within small organizations. Important dimensions of leadership considered by the study include differentiation of supervisory roles, closeness of supervision, employee orientation, and group relationships. The four dimensions are described below:

1. Differentiation of supervisory role. Behavior by a leader that reflects greater emphasis upon activities of planning and performing specialized skilled tasks; spending a greater proportion of time in actual supervision, rather than performing the men's own tasks himself or absorption in impersonal paperwork.

2. Closeness of supervision. Behavior that delegates authority, checks upon subordinates less frequently, provides more general, less frequent instructions about the work, makes greater allowance for individuals to perform in their own ways and at their own paces.

3. Employee orientation. Behavior that gives major emphasis to a supportive personal relationship, and that reflects a personal interest in subordinates; being more understanding, less punitive, easy to talk to, and willing to help groom employees for advancement.

4. Group relationships. Behavior by the leader that results in group cohesiveness, pride by subordinates in their work group, a feeling of membership in the group, and mutual help on the part of those subordinates (p. 243).

The complex model suggests that different leadership characteristics are associated with different aspects of performance and that performance outcomes, at times, seem associated with satisfaction outcomes. Additionally, other intervening constructs including leadership-related or work-pattern-related activities are needed to predict effectiveness. These include use of expert power at each managerial level as well as influence acceptance, employee rivalry, time ratios regarding organization activities, professional development, underlying education or tutelage, employee aspiration levels, affiliation levels, needs, and goal compatibility. All of this complexity goes to show that quantifying and analyzing behavior factors as if there is an optimal scientific mix of every possible input factor is dizzying academic work, indeed!

As with skills and traits, behaviors fall naturally into the language of ethical leadership theory. Even Bowers and Seashore’s four factors of leadership developed in the 1960s contains the seeds of ethical leadership explored roughly a half century (or more) later by Brown, Treviño, Walumbwa, and others. Support, interaction, goal emphasis and work facilitation are al key components in developing and maintaining an ethical work culture through daily modeling and salient instances of ethical behavior. As Katz suggested, even when traits and skills play a causal relationship in group performance and satisfaction, it is typically through the behaviors those skills and traits promote and the systems and processes which ethical cognition eventually helps design and put into place. It is through the behavioral interaction, however complicated that is to parse out and quantify, that the final piece of the ethical leader’s masterpiece is completed.

Amoral and Unethical Leadership

This review has dealt primarily with the question of what ethical leadership is and how ethical leaders use skills, traits, and behaviors to influence others. It is also necessary to consider a few things that ethical leadership is not in order to better understand the power ethical leadership has to cast its sphere of influence directly and indirectly. Most leadership theory that does not involve ethics might appear on the surface to be amoral, that is, absent of moral consideration. However, closer examination likely reveals moral and ethical underpinnings. A few leadership styles, however, are in direct conflict to ethical leadership. 

One type of leadership that seems to deviate strongly from the ideals of ethical leadership is narcissistic leadership. Rosenthal and Pittinsky (2006) describe the tendencies of this leadership style in great detail. They list the following criteria for narcissism:

1. Grandiose sense of self-importance; 2. Preoccupation with fantasies of unlimited success/power; 3. Belief in “special” or unique status (including fixation on associating with high-status people/institutions); 4. Requirement for excessive admiration; 5. Unreasonable sense and expectations of entitlement; 6. Interpersonal exploitation of others; 7. Lack of empathy; Envy; 9. Arrogant behavior/attitudes (p. 619).

Although the authors admit that narcissists are sometimes “charmers who can convert the masses with their rhetoric,” (p. 622), there are ultimately more negatives than positives for organizations employing a narcissistic leader. Some of the upsides noted include short-term inspiration, grand group visions, dramatic decisions and actions, drive for power and glory, aggressive behavior and the resulting innovations and advancements that may result from such bold leadership. Downsides, however, are related to the collateral damage that narcissistic leaders, who may be underqualified in other ways, can often cause as they grate and wear on their colleagues in the longer run. Narcissistic leaders may damage systems, relationships, and organizational culture. They are prone to lapses in judgement, self-promotion, self-nomination, deception, manipulation, intimidation, and cruelty. 

Other traits and behaviors of narcissists may only rise to the level of annoying or abrasive: Blame; hypercompetition; hypersensitivity; need for recognition; angry outbursts; lack of empathy, irrationality, irritability, harshness, and paranoia (p. 618-619). Narcissism is positively linked to attaining a leadership position, but not necessarily to performing well in the position (p. 624). Narcissists tend to greatly overestimate their leadership performances relative to others' ratings. They also tend to make riskier decisions and are less interested in low-risk decisions (thus lose more often). The narcissist does not necessarily have bad intentions, but his or her narcissism and the needs it harbors represent a constant conflict of interest between the leader and the organization. Even if the narcissist is well-intentioned, putting his or her own needs above those of others because of low EQ can destroy any ethical culture or good will that has been established in the same way a disconfirming instance would harm the credibility and attraction of an otherwise ethical leader.

Situational leadership is another theory that may lead to conflict with the goals and processes of ethical leadership. It has fallen out of favor since its heyday in the 1970s and 1980s, partially due to empirical performance against “one best” management styles that focus on balanced levels of concern for employees and concern for results at all times. Blake and colleagues (1982) make a strong argument against situationism – leaders changing their management style or behavior to fit each unique situation. They report that results from several studies support a consistent team-centered, employee-oriented approach to leadership over a top-down delegation of authority by a situational leader (p. 40). The preferred approach involves making both components – people and results – the highest priority (9 out of 9 score for each referred to as the “9,9” style). The authors suggest that situational leadership results in inferior employee attributes measured in the following areas: Participation, trust, respect, involvement, commitment, consensus, creativity, goals, support, and capacity for change (p. 44). Beyond this critique, situational leadership ignores the implications of the three major theoretical underpinnings of ethical leadership. Constant change and adjustment from leaders does not promote modeled or learned behavior, it does not provide reliable LMX relationships, and it does not allow for employees to build a grounded personal identity that has synergy with the ever-changing organizational leadership.

Charismatic leaders are more controversial antitheses of ethical leaders. This is because a certain amount of charisma certainly does contribute to the success of any leader. Gini (1997) points out that leaders “must possess enough self-esteem to be seen, heard and understood in order to engender confidence and cooperation,” (p. 326). He also notes that leadership almost always involves at least a minimum level of

transactional exchanges, where the organization can benefit if its leaders are able to drive performance through charisma. However, ultimately, charismatic leadership in insufficient by itself to produce the long-term direct and distal influences associated with ethical leadership. In fact, one of the classic faults of organizations brought to prominence by charismatic leaders is that they suffer from a lack of infrastructure and culture that makes them susceptible to falling apart if that leader departs, becomes corrupted, or simply starts to become less effective. The leader’s star can fade, or one instance of impropriety can wreck his or her reputation, and the organization may be unmasked as a cult of personality with low levels of ethical structure, loyalty, and personal identity among its employees. Transformation, which is the organizational goal in Gini’s article, requires the real intention of change by capable leaders, but also requires those leaders to pursue intentional change actively (p. 325). Charisma (along with its darker cousin, ambition), is not necessarily a bad trait or characteristic in a leader, but it is much less transferrable than ethical culture. Ethical leaders may be charismatic to an extent, but charismatic leaders without an ethical approach do not share many antecedents or performance outcomes with ethical leaders as defined above.

Conclusions and Implications for Further Research

This review pulled information regarding ethical leadership from a staggering array of literature. The many different theoretical approaches to studying leadership make it a fascinating subject, but also confuse and confound researchers seeking stable ground from which to build further hypotheses. There is much variation of foundational theories, operational definitions, and research techniques even among those who concentrate on ethical or moral leadership approaches. This is not surprising as the complexity in contributing factors and interactions regarding any viable leadership theory cannot be overstated. Hopefully, this review contributes to the understanding that ethical leadership is rooted in skills, traits, and behaviors that fit into a system of moral values that can be modeled, communicated, incorporated into organizational goals and processes, and used consistently to build an ethical ethos or culture over time. It also confirms theoretical ties in the literature to social learning theory, social exchange theory, and social identity theory. Finally, it cites cases where ethical leadership is associated with beneficial outcomes for both the organization and its employees.

Practically speaking, the complexity of measuring leader efficacy, organizational performance, and employee or client satisfaction should make the case to advocate for caution among researchers of ethical or moral leadership. It can be tempting to combine a “basket” of skills, traits, and behaviors in an attempt to maximize the r2 value in specific studies, but any study that is not carefully crafted to avoid ambiguity or measuring error pitfalls is in danger of imploding on itself logically. Perhaps worse, it may also become so bogged down in intervening and moderating variables and cleverly-parsed operational definitions that it loses external validity and practical usefulness altogether. Researchers might minimize confusion by targeting and studying specific skills, traits, or behaviors individually instead of combining them into a causal matrix. Based on this review, traits and skills seem to be better measures of the makeup of individual leaders because they are easier to identify and test. Behaviors and styles may then be better used to find nuanced patterns in leadership interactions.

References

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