The effect of ethical values on transformational leadership and ethical climate in organisations

By A. Engelbrecht, A. S. V. Aswegen, C. Theron. 2005

124 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Ethical leaders are ultimately responsible for developing a strong and sustainable ethical climate in organisations. Ethical values and the ability to influence followers to internalise these values have become prerequisites for effective leadership in modern organisations. Although ethics, leadership, and values have received much attention, there has been little coordinated effort to integrate transformational leadership with ethical climate and ethical values. The aim of this study was to develop and validate a theoretical model to explain the structural relationships between these variables in the South African business context. The results revealed that altruism influences transformational leadership positively, and that transformational leadership in turn has a positive effect on ethical climate. Some support was also found for the proposition that integrity moderates the effect of transformational leadership on ethical climate.

Subfields: Demography, Information Systems and Management, Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/9ab20fb8395ddf6784b3a9e5d1d830d839c7b3d3

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In Demography

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In Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management

Citations in the corpus

Linking ethical leadership and ethical climate to employees' ethical behavior: the moderating role of person–organization fit (2020, background): “Therefore, it has been strongly suggested by some other studies that an ethical leadership has a vital influence on the ethical climate (Mayer et al., 2009; Engelbrecht et al., 2005; Lu and Lin, 2014).”
An Empirical Study of Leader Ethical Values, Transformational and Transactional Leadership, and Follower Attitudes Toward Corporate Social Responsibility (2011, background): “Similarly, Engelbrecht et al. (2004) found that leader altruism was strongly associated with transformational leadership, which demonstrated a positive effect on an ethical organizational climate.”
Examining the Link Between Ethical Leadership and Employee Misconduct: The Mediating Role of Ethical Climate (2010, background): “Engelbrecht et al. (2005) found that transformational leadership has a positive relationship with ethical climates in organizations.”