رهبری اخلاقی و استبدادی، ارتباط با مسئولیت اجتماعی رهبر، اثربخشی تیم مدیریت و خوشبینی زیردستان: در یک مطالعه چند روشی

In this multi-method study, we examined the relationships of leader's social responsibility with different aspects of ethical leadership (morality and fairness, role clarification, and power sharing) as well as with despotic leadership. We also investigated how these leadership behaviors relate to effectiveness and optimism, using multiple-source ratings. Interviews with CEOs (N = 73) were coded for the presence of leader's social responsibility and its facets. Also, using questionnaires, direct reports rated each CEOs' leader behavior (n = 130) and a second group of direct reports (n = 119) rated effectiveness and optimism. As expected, leaders high on social responsibility were rated higher on ethical leadership and lower on despotic leadership. Ethical leadership was also positively related to perceived top management team effectiveness and subordinates' optimism about the future of the organization and their own place within it.

The last few years show a growing interest in the development and promotion of ethical leadership in organizations. Ethical leadership is thought to be uniquely important because of the impact leaders may have on the conduct of (others in) the organization and ultimately on organizational performance (cf. Aronson, 2001, Kanungo, 2001 and Trevino et al., 2003). Besides these expected positive effects of ethical leader behavior, a lapse in ethics at the top can be costly for organizations as recent media scandals show. Despite its relevance empirically based knowledge about ethical leadership is limited. Only few studies to date have tested the proposed link between ethical leadership and effectiveness. Here we add to this developing literature by starting to address this relationship. Specifically, we test whether CEO's ethical leadership behavior is positively related to perceived top management effectiveness. We also relate CEO's ethical leadership to followers' optimism about the future of the organization and their own place within it. Optimism is a human virtue driving behavior and feelings at work (e.g., Luthans, 2002) and we argue that ethical leader behavior will contribute to employees' optimism about their organization and will increase their willingness to remain and contribute to its success. To our knowledge, this has not yet been tested. Moreover, little is known about the potential role of personal characteristics of ethical leaders, such as the leader's personality and upbringing. Here, we focus on the relationship between ethical leadership and a set of individual attributes that fall under the more general category of leader social responsibility (moral–legal standard of conduct, internal obligation, concern for others, concern about consequences, and self-judgment), a relationship that has not been tested to date. Therefore, the present study adds to the literature by examining the relationships between leaders' social responsibility and ethical leadership (morality and fairness, role clarification, and power sharing) as well as despotic leadership. Rather than solely relying on survey measures, the study combines multi-source survey data from different groups of subordinates with data derived from coding of interviews with CEOs.

The current study investigated correlates of ethical and despotic leadership. The results showed the importance of leader's social responsibility in relation to ethical and despotic leadership. In addition, ethical leadership is found to be important for perceived top management team effectiveness and subordinates' optimism about the future of the organization and their own place within it. Future research can further examine the link between (personality) characteristics or leader responsibility and ethical as well as despotic leadership, using coding methodology or other measures for which the potential of social desirability is reduced, and investigate additional consequences of such leadership for organizations. Also, our findings show that the organizational context matters for certain forms of ethical and unethical leader behavior and their effects. Thus, contextual moderators of the impact of these forms of leadership are likely to exist. This too is an important area for future investigation, which will further our understanding of when, how and why (un)ethical forms of leader behavior affect organizations and their members.