Leadership, Identity, and Ethics

Abstract

This special issue of Journal of Business Ethics focuses on the interactions between leadership, ethics and identity. A substantial literature is developing centered on ethics and morality in work organizations. In recent times, critical attention has focused on how identities are best conceived and researched, the discursive resources that are drawn on in processes of identity construction, and how identities are embedded in relations of power. A much larger and longer established management and organization studies literature exists which has theorized and explored empirically aspects of leadership. However, surprisingly, little attention has been devoted to how notions of ‘‘leadership,’’ ‘‘ethics,’’ and ‘‘identity’’ are connected conceptually or in practice. This is an important gap that our special issue seeks to address. In studying how ethics are embedded in leadership and identity issues, we gain a better understanding of basic sensemaking practices of organizational actors involved in ‘‘leading’’ and ‘‘following,’’ and of how identity issues are bound-up with the desire to become a leader, the style that a leader adopts, influence strategies used, and use of power. In this issue, we aim equally at scholars whose principal interest is ‘‘ethics and leadership,’’ ‘‘ethics and identity,’’ and ‘‘identity and leadership’’. Leadership, Ethics, and Identity