The effect of core ethical values on ethical leadership, organisational justice, ethical climate and leader effectiveness

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This study arose from a high need to determine the factors contributing to leader effectiveness in South African organisations by identifying the determinants thereof. The purpose of the study furthermore was to identify the determinants of unethical and counterproductive behaviours in the workplace. There is a belief that leaders should set aside ethical standards to succeed in the rough-and-tumble world of business. In contrast, evidence has revealed that ethical leaders can frequently be seen as more effective in organisations.Since the purpose of this study was to examine factors contributing to perceived leader effectiveness within South African organisations, the relationship between perceived effective leadership, ethical climate, organisational justice, ethical leadership and core ethical values was investigated. The aim was to provide further theoretical and empirical evidence that effective ethical leadership can be realised through instilling an ethical organisational climate in which integrity, altruism and fairness are exhibited and encouraged.A theoretical model was developed to explain the structural relationships between the latent variables and effective leadership within organisations. Substantive hypotheses were formulated in order to determine the validity of the propositions made in the literature review, with the objective of testing the proposed ethical climate structural model.The sample was selected from of employees of a large retail company mainly situated in the Western Cape but with branches all over South Africa and in the rest of Africa. The selection consisted of 224 first-line and middle management employees. Each of the respondents completed the Leader Effectiveness Questionnaire (LEQ), the Ethical Climate Scale (ECS), the Justice Scale, the Leadership of Ethics Scale (LES), the Revised Behavioural Integrity Scale (BIS-R) and Langley's Value Scale.The hypotheses and the structural model were empirically tested using various statistical methods. Reliability analysis was completed on all the measurement scales and satisfactory reliability was found. The content and structure of the measured constructs were examined by means of confirmatory factor analysis and the results indicated that good fit was achieved for all the refined measurement models. Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) was subsequently used to determine the extent to which the conceptual model fitted the data obtained from the sample and to test the relationships between the constructs. The results revealed that integrity and altruism have a direct and positive influence on ethical leadership. Support furthermore was found for the influence of ethical climate on leader effectiveness. The results however indicated that support could not be found for the relationship between organisational justice and leader effectiveness. Conversely, it was found that ethical leadership has a direct and positive influence on leader effectiveness. In addition, organisational justice also exhibited a positive influence on ethical climate. On the other hand, ethical leadership did not have a positive influence on ethical climate. Finally, support was found for the influence of ethical leadership on organisational justice.Final conclusions were drawn from the results obtained and recommendations for future research are made.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University