Abstract
This critical PhD review paper examines existing scholarship on ethical leadership in sport. Following a general trend in business ethics and related fields, ethical leadership has gained considerable research attention in sport over the last decades. Within this growing body of literature, ethical leadership is often presented as part of the desired strategic response of sport organizations to tackle the so-called dark side of sport (i.e., formed by such ethical issues as abuse, violence, management fraud, match-fixing, and doping). However, this critical PhD review paper argues that the current body of literature on ethical leadership in sport has matured along two strongly related yet quite isolated lines of inquiry: a normative (i.e., philosophical) and a descriptive (i.e., empirical) line. While the normative line of inquiry focuses on what ethical leadership in sport should look like based on moral reasoning, the descriptive line examines how ethical leadership in sport is perceived in practice and how it relates to certain antecedents and outcomes. As both lines offer complementary insights, we advocate future research to bridge this gap to come to an improved understanding of ethical leadership in sport. To this aim, we propose a broad stakeholder perspective on ethical leadership in sport, in which necessary attention is given to how all involved stakeholders make sense of ethical leadership as a socially constructed and context-dependent phenomenon.
Highlights
Leadership continues to be one of the most studied social phenomena
Formal forms of leadership imply some extent of authority, which causes leaders’ decisions to have a broad impact and increases the likelihood that ethical issues or dilemmas occur (Flanigan, 2018; Heres, 2014)
Sport is a social context in which the ethical dimension of leadership is amply illustrated
Summary
This critical PhD review paper examines existing scholarship on ethical leadership in sport. Following a general trend in business ethics and related fields, ethical leadership has gained considerable research attention in sport over the last decades Within this growing body of literature, ethical leadership is often presented as part of the desired strategic response of sport organizations to tackle the so-called dark side of sport (i.e., formed by such ethical issues as abuse, violence, management fraud, match-fixing, and doping). While the normative line of inquiry focuses on what ethical leadership in sport should look like based on moral reasoning, the descriptive line examines how ethical leadership in sport is perceived in practice and how it relates to certain antecedents and outcomes As both lines offer complementary insights, we advocate future research to bridge this gap to come to an improved understanding of ethical leadership in sport.
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have