The consequences of ethical leadership: comparisons with transformational leadership and abusive supervision

Date
2009
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
The present group-level research evaluated the unique contributions of Brown, Trevino, and Harrison's (2005) ethical leadership construct to the leadership literature. The effects of ethical leadership on employee counterproductive work behaviours, organizational citizenship behaviours, organizational commitment, and satisfaction with leader were examined. To establish construct distinctiveness, the effects of ethical leadership were evaluated relative to two ethically-oriented leadership constructs, namely transformational leadership (Bass, 1985) and abusive supervision (Tepper, 2000). Research participants (N = 297) were employees of five not-for-profit organizations working in 58 teams. The results of common factor analysis revealed a large factor defined by ethical and transformational leadership items, and a second smaller factor with abusive supervision items. Ethical leadership also correlated rather strongly (r = .88) with transformational leadership in the total sample. Hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) analyses showed that ethical leadership positively predicted leader satisfaction, organizational citizenship behaviours, and affective organizational commitment at the group level. When compared to transformational leadership and abusive supervision, however, ethical leadership explained little to no unique variance in the outcome variables. Altogether, the present research provides different sources of evidence that suggest that ethical leadership and its effects overlap considerably with transformational leadership. Some theoretical implications of the research findings are discussed.
Description
Bibliography: p. 76-82
Keywords
Citation
Ogunfowora, B. (2009). The consequences of ethical leadership: comparisons with transformational leadership and abusive supervision (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca. doi:10.11575/PRISM/3157
Collections