Fostering Ethical Leadership in Organizations

Abstract

High profile ethical scandals engulfing every sphere of life and profession have gained importance currently. For example, major business failures such as WorldCom, Enron, Tyco International, HealthSouth, Parmalat, and Lehman Brothers are among business organizations where leaders failed ethically for a number of reasons. It has been noted that ethical leadership failures have affected the culture, reputation and productivity of organizations. With the ever-increasing number of extensively discussed ethical scandals, the question has come up how these ethical failures could have been prevented. Moreover, previous research work shows that ethical leadership remains largely unexplored and there is still paucity of knowledge regarding antecedents of ethical leadership. Thus, this study addresses the question: What facilitates and increases ethical leadership? This paper is an attempt to look for strategies that could foster ethical behaviour as well as prevent unethical practices in organizations. Pedagogical and didactic implications for leadership educators have been delineated. Equally, future research directions are suggested. Future at embracing authentic ethical leadership in various domains of society embracing educational institutions, businesses, civil organizations, governments and homes can only be secured by reinstating holistic education and character formation of students in all places of learning.

Keywords: ethical leadership, ethical failures, holistic education, character formation