Effect of ethical leadership and climate on effectiveness

Amos S Engelbrecht,Janneke Wolmarans,Bright Mahembe

doi:10.4102/sajhrm.v15i0.781

Amos S Engelbrecht, Janneke Wolmarans + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.4102/sajhrm.v15i0.781

Copy DOI

Abstract

Orientation: The increasing prevalence of theft, sabotage and other deviant behaviours in the workplace has disastrous effects for organisations, such as lowered effectiveness, escalated costs and the organisation’s declining reputation.Research purpose: The purpose of the research was to design and investigate the relationships among perceived leader effectiveness, ethical climate and ethical leadership. A further objective of the investigation was to validate a conceptual model clarifying the structural associations among the latent constructs in the South African corporate domain.Motivation for the study: A successful leader is both an ethical and an effective leader. An organisation’s leadership is seen as the most critical element in establishing and maintaining an ethical climate in organisations.Research design, approach and method: A convenient and multi-cultural sample comprised of 224 employees from various organisations in South Africa. The structure and content of the variables were analysed through confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), beside item analysis.Main findings: Satisfactory reliability was found for all the measurement scales. The results of CFA demonstrated acceptable fit with the data for the refined measurement and structural models. The results of structural equation modelling (SEM) indicated positive relationships among ethical leadership, ethical climate and leader effectiveness.Practical implications: Organisational leaders should take full responsibility for cultivating ethics through ethical leader behaviour and an ethical climate. By reinforcing these aspects, perceived leader effectiveness can be advanced, which will ultimately decrease corruption and other forms of counterproductive behaviour in South African organisations.Contribution: The study provides further theoretical and empirical evidence that leadership effectiveness can be realised through instilling an ethical organisational climate in which ethical leadership is exhibited and encouraged.

Highlights

South African organisations are characterised by accelerated counterproductive behaviour (Van Zyl, 2012)
Negative outcomes that unethical behaviour sustains for individuals, organisations and the broader South African economy necessitate an emphasis on the factors that may have an effect on ethical behaviour (Engelbrecht, Heine & Mahembe, 2014; Naidoo, 2012; Lloyd & May, 2010)
It seems that followers would perceive their organisational climate as ethical if they can see that their leader is ethical and consistent in his or her leadership role

Summary

Introduction

South African organisations are characterised by accelerated counterproductive behaviour (e.g. corruption, crime, anarchy and the threatening of the social framework of the communities) (Van Zyl, 2012). Van Zyl (2012) stated that the South African corporate sector, in particular, has been confronted increasingly with an absence of recognised moral norms in their procedures. South African organisations are characterised by accelerated counterproductive behaviour (e.g. corruption, crime, anarchy and the threatening of the social framework of the communities) (Van Zyl, 2012). Negative outcomes that unethical behaviour sustains for individuals, organisations and the broader South African economy necessitate an emphasis on the factors that may have an effect on ethical behaviour (Engelbrecht, Heine & Mahembe, 2014; Naidoo, 2012; Lloyd & May, 2010). An organisation’s leadership is seen as the most critical element in creating, establishing and maintaining an ethical organisational culture (Eisenbeiss, 2012; Kalshoven, Den Hartog & De Hoogh, 2011; Kuntz, Kuntz, Elenkov & Nabirukhina, 2013). To develop an ethical culture, the leader should play a significant role in the development of the ethical strategy, convey the ethical code of behaviour and lead by example pertaining to principled leadership

Objectives

Methods

Findings

Conclusion