Abstract
Orientation: A need exists to investigate leader behaviour necessary to curb the corruption that has infected and weakened South Africa’s moral fibre. Such leader behaviour would need to be underpinned by a set of universal moral values.Research purpose: The purpose of this study was to develop a new measure, the principled leadership scale (PLS), by integrating the value-based behaviours inherent in transformational, servant, authentic and ethical leadership.Motivation for the study: Leader behaviour intrinsic to value-based leadership was found to be closely aligned with universal moral values. Because the study found a considerable overlap between the behaviours mentioned in the value-based leadership theories, it sought to integrate these behaviours under one construct and to develop a reliable and valid scale to assess this construct.Research approach/design and method: Data from the quantitative study were analysed by means of item analysis, exploratory and confirmatory bi-factor analysis conducted via structural equation modelling.Main findings: The confirmatory bi-factor solution corroborated a strong general principled leadership factor and four moderately weak group factors. The statistical analyses provided good fit of the PLS measurement model with the empirical data.Practical and managerial implications: The study found acceptable measurement properties of the PLS that may be used for applications, such as the selecting, training and developing of ethical leadership in organisations.Contribution/value-add: The study adds value in that it is the first to integrate the four value-based leadership theories under one construct and to develop a potential psychometrically sound instrument to measure principled leadership.
Highlights
The Enron debacle of 2001 could possibly be regarded as one of the most complex examples of unethical and corrupt business practices of the past two decades
The results support a qualitative distinction between a general principled leadership factor and the four group factors, the low factor loadings indicate that the group factors do not yield precise enough measures of unique aspects of principled leadership to be useful in practical applications (De Bruin & Du Plessis, 2015)
Organisations that invest in assessing the principled leader behaviour of their top management, and in recruiting and developing principled leaders, should be confident that they have the best calibre role models in place to ensure the cascading of principled behaviour down the ranks of the organisations
Summary
The Enron debacle of 2001 could possibly be regarded as one of the most complex examples of unethical and corrupt business practices of the past two decades. Despite the lessons that leaders could have learnt from this debacle, history keeps repeating itself as daily reports of unethical behaviour, greed and the abuse of power by public and private organisational leaders continue to make headline news. The leaders’ corrupt behaviour tends to infiltrate and pollute the entire organisation. This phenomenon has its roots in the social learning theory (SLT), developed by Bandura (Bandura, cited in Mayer, Kuenzi, Greenbaum, Bardes, & Savador, 2009), which suggests that individuals will strive to emulate the behaviour of role models in their work environment. In organisations where leaders are corrupt, display immoral behaviour as the norm and are seen to reap positive rewards despite this behaviour, employees will learn to emulate such behaviour to reap rewards for themselves
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