Ethical Leadership and Its Importances

From the definition of leadership (Robbins & Coulter, 2012), the main target of leaders is to achieve group or organizational goal, which is being more productive and profitable (Treviño, Brown, & Hartman, 2003). By now, management scholars have already known the importance of people in leadership, people-oriented behaviors, which mean concerning employees and showing trust and respect to them is a powerful proof.

However, in my opinion, the focus of current theories still on teaching leaders how to achieve increasing production and profits in more acceptable ways. In the past, leaders use reward and coercive power to push employees working in the direction of productivity, from which impressions of inhumane, cruel, imperious of leaders' image emerge. At present, leaders try to be supportive and participative in order to gain employees' support and loyalty. The aim of doing these is still the same with the past. While the only difference is a good interpersonal relationship can encourage employees contribute more to the organization to increase production and profits. Nevertheless, the premise of friendly relationship is employees working hard, otherwise leaders may use their power to force them to be more productive. In the 21st century, firms are no longer places where people come to work, they should provide an opportunity for employees to improve themselves, in which case, people-oriented is only one part of good leadership, ability, ethics and transforming employees are also criteria to evaluate (Resick, Hanges, Dickson, & Mitchelson, 2006). Which means, all leadership have the responsibility for influencing followers to complete tasks, perform well (Resick, Hanges, Dickson, & Mitchelson, 2006) and ensuring moral and ethical standardized conduct (Barnard, 1968). Ethical leadership is needed to reach the above targets. According to previous study, ethical behavior and interpersonal conflict these two follower behaviors can be influenced by leadership (Brown & Treviño, 2006). Ethical leadership can have effect on the organization via influencing follower behaviors. In addition, it is demonstrated that leadership has the unique function of distinguishing organizational culture (Schein, 1992). I also explore consequences of ethical leadership in organizational culture by analyzing some examples. In this easy, I will address my opinion of ethical leadership mainly by examining four questions, what is ethical leadership, who are engaged in, why it is important to organization and how to attain it.

WHAT IS ETHICAL LEADERSHIP AND ITS FEATURES

"As leaders are by nature in a position of social power, ethical leadership focuses on how leaders use their social power in the decisions they make, actions they engage in and ways they influence others (Treviño, Brown, & Hartman, 2003)." Treviño et al. (2003) draw a conclusion that ethical leadership is leadership which involves in respecting the rights and dignity of others' in leading manners from interviewing ethics officials and senior managers from different companies. Three important parts of ethical leadership highlighted are being an ethical example, treating people fairly, and actively managing morality (Brown, Treviño, & Harrison, 2005). As a consequence, I discover some ordinary features on ethical leadership. The following are some characteristics of ethical leadership to give a comprehensive understanding of it.

People-focused

Usually, people-focusd in one of the features of ethical leaders. They are regarded as caring, respectful, helping employees to improve and being kind to others (Treviño, Brown, & Hartman, 2003)." They will concern about the followers' interest and feelings.

Visible ethical actions and traits

Ethical leaders act as the role model and lead by examples. So their behavors must be conducted ethically and walk the ethical talk. They are regarded as honest, people of integrity, open communicators and receptive listeners, trustworthy, inspirational and always doing the right things.

Setting ethical standards and accountability

First, ethical leaders set standard and expectations to employees. They will not only notify the detail to employees but also keep it in everyone's mind. After creating and institutionalizing values, they will stick the principles and standards. Furthermore, they will also reinforce the created system by rewards and punishments.

Broad ethical awareness

Ethical leaders are also described to have broad ethical awareness and considerations. They possess basic vision of the organization and concern numerous stakeholders including community and society. They understand how their decisions can an influence on others, and they will never use their social power to serve self-serving interests due to the concern of serving the corporation better.

Decision-making processes

Ethical leaders care about the approaches to attain business objectives. As a result, during decision making process they use fair criteria and concern followers' feeling to the actions.

It can be concluded that ethical leadership is a kind of leadership with the characteristics of people-oriented, respecting the rights and dignity of employees, concerning employees' interests, and other moral behaviors.

WHY ETHICAL LEADERSHIP MATTERS?

In addition to having a fundamental understanding of ethical leadership and exploring who are probable to be ethical leaders, I still analyze how ethical leadership relates to the following aspects - unit-level outcomes and organizational culture for demonstrating its importances.

Ethical Leadership and Unit-Level Outcomes

Brown et al.(2006) believe that leadership have influence on two follower behaviours - unethical behaviour that is morally unacceptable and interpersonal conflict that individuals or parties have different interests or goals, which are the special outcomes I examine. The reason I concentrate on unit-level outcomes is that members in an similar norms environment are likely to behave identically. I will explore the influence of ethical leadership on unethical behaviour and interpersonal conflict separately.

Ethical leadership and unethical behaviour

I draw a conclusion of effect of ethical leadership on unethical behavior based on social learning theory which means people learn within a social context (Bandura, 1977). In an organization, individuals learn from observing other's behavior, which role is usually played by their supervisors. Besides direct observation,