Northouse, Leadership 9e
SAGE Publishing, 2022
Lecture Notes
Chapter 15: Leadership Ethics
Learning Objectives
15-2 Discuss the strengths of the ethical approach to leadership.
15-4 Recognize applications of the ethical approach to leadership.
Annotated Chapter Outline
I. Description
A. Unlike other chapters, this one is multifaceted and presents a broad set of ethical
viewpoints.
i. A general guide to leadership ethics.
B. Despite a wealth of historical accounts of “great leaders” and their morals, there is very
little research on leadership ethics.
C. One of the earliest writings on leadership ethics appeared in 1966, but was a small set of
working papers from an equally small group of scholars.
i. Examined how leadership theory and practice could be used to build a more
caring and just society.
D. Recent corporate and political scandals have raised substantial interest in the nature of
ethical leadership.
E. Ethics Defined
i. Western traditions of ethics date back to Plato and Aristotle.
a. The word ethics has its roots in the Greek word ethos, which translates
to “customs,” “conduct,” or “character.”
b. Ethics is concerned with the kinds of values and morals an individual or
a society finds desirable or appropriate.
ii. With specific regard to leadership, ethics is concerned with what leaders do and
who leaders are.
a. Leader behavior and virtuousness.
iii. A leader’s choices are also influenced by his or her moral development. The most
widely recognized theory advanced to explain how people think about moral
issues is Kohlberg’s stages of moral development.
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a. Kohlberg explored the reasoning behind choices in groups of children
presented with moral dilemmas.
b. From these data, he created a classification system of moral reasoning
that was divided into six stages: Stage 1—Obedience and Punishment,
iv. In Level 1, Preconventional Morality, an individual tends to judge the morality of
an action by its direct consequences.
a. Stage 1—Obedience and Punishment. The individual is egocentric, with
an external morality dictated by authority; rules are obeyed to avoid
punishment.
b. Stage 2—Individualism and Exchange. The individual makes moral
v. In Level 2, Conventional Morality, the morality of actions is assessed by
comparison to society’s views and expectations.
a. Stage 3—Interpersonal Accord and Conformity. The individual makes
b. Stage 4—Maintaining the Social Order. The individual makes moral
decisions in ways that show concern for society as a whole; they
vi. In Level 3, Postconventional Morality, individuals have developed their own
personal set of ethics and morals that guide their behavior.
a. Stage 5—Social Contract and Individual Rights. Individuals make moral
decisions based on a social contract and his or her views on what a good
b. Stage 6—Universal Principles. At this stage, the individual’s moral
vii. Kohlberg’s model of moral development has been criticized as:
a. Focusing exclusively on justice values.
b. Sex-biased, since it is derived from an all-male sample.
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d. Advocating a postconventional morality where people place their own
F. Ethical Theories
i. Ethical theories can be thought of as falling within two broad domains: theories
about leaders’ conduct and theories about leaders’ character.
ii. Ethical theories that deal with the conduct of leaders are in turn divided into two
kinds: theories that stress the consequences of leaders’ actions and those that
emphasize the duty or rules governing leaders’ actions.
a. Teleological theories try to answer questions about right and wrong by
iii. In assessing consequences, there are three different approaches to making
decisions regarding moral conduct:
a. Ethical egoism: States that a person should act so as to create the
greatest good for themselves.
iv. Quite different from looking at which actions will produce which outcomes,
deontological theory suggests whether a given action is ethical rests not only
v. Whereas teleological and deontological theories approach ethics by looking at
the behavior or conduct of a leader, a second set of theories approaches ethics
from the viewpoint of a leader’s character (virtue-based theories).
a. In this perspective, virtues are rooted in the individual and can be
vi. There are a number of common virtues which seem to be valued, many of which
date back to Aristotle: courage, temperance, generosity, self-control, honesty,
sociability, modesty, fairness, and justice.
vii. In essence, virtue-based ethics is about being and becoming a good, worthy
human being.
G. Centrality of Ethics to Leadership
i. The influence dimension of leadership requires the leader to have an impact on
the lives of those being led.
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a. To make a change in other people carries with it an enormous ethical
ii. The principle of “respect for people” demands that leaders be sensitive to
followers’ own interests, needs, and conscientious concerns.
a. Proposes leaders have a special concern for others, as they have a
greater opportunity to influence others in significant ways.
iii. Ethics is central to leadership, and leaders help to establish and reinforce
organizational values.
a. Every leader has a distinct philosophy and point of view.
H. Heifetz’s Perspective on Ethical Leadership
i. Ronald Heifetz’s (1994) approach to ethical leadership emphasizes how leaders
help followers to confront conflict and to address conflict by effecting changes.
a. According to Heifetz, leadership involves the use of authority to help
ii. For Heifetz (1994), leaders must use authority to mobilize people to face tough
issues.
a. This is easier when the leader provides a “holding environment” in
iii. Leaders may also use authority to:
a. Get people to pay attention to the issues.
b. Act as a reality test regarding information.
e. Facilitate decision making.
I. Burns’s Perspective on Ethical Leadership
i. Transformational leadership involves attempts by leaders to move followers to
higher standards of moral responsibility.
a. Represents a clearly moral approach to leadership.
ii. The origins of Burns’s position on leadership ethics are rooted in the works of
such writers as Abraham Maslow, Milton Rokeach, and Lawrence Kohlberg.
iii. Criticisms of Burns’ perspective:
a. What makes a set of moral values “better” than others, and what
constitutes a moral high ground?
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b. If leadership, by definition, entails raising individual moral functioning,
J. The Dark Side of Leadership
i. Although Burns (1978) placed ethics at the core of leadership, there still exists a
dark side of leadership that exemplifies leadership that is unethical and
destructive.
a. The dark side of leadership is the destructive and toxic side of
leadership in that a leader uses leadership for personal ends (such as
pseudotransformational and destructive leaderships).
ii. Toxic leaders are characterized by destructive behaviors such as leaving their
followers worse off than they found them, violating the basic human rights of
others, and playing to followers’ basest fears.
a. Associated personal characteristics include lack of integrity, insatiable
of ethics, erratic behavior, narcissism, and self-promoting.
iii. The same characteristics and behaviors that distinguish leaders as special can
also be used by leaders to produce disastrous outcomes.
a. Destructive leadership is closely related to negative affectivity and to
iv. In an attempt to more clearly define destructive leadership, Padilla, Hogan, and
Kaiser (2007) developed the concept of a toxic triangle that focuses on the
influences of destructive leaders, susceptible followers, and conducive
environments.
v. Destructive leaders: Leaders who have charisma and a need to use power and
coercion for personal gains.
a. They are also narcissistic and often attention-getting and self-absorbed.
vi. Susceptible followers: Followers, either conformers or colluders, who are
particularly vulnerable to abuse from destructive leaders.
a. Conformers: Susceptible followers who go along with destructive
leaders to satisfy unmet needs such as emptiness, alienation, or need
for community.
b. Colluders: Susceptible followers who may respond to destructive
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vii. Conducive environment: An environment with characteristics that are optimal
for the development of destructive leadership.
a. In unstable environments, the leader is often granted more authority to
assert radical change.
K. Principles of Ethical Leadership
i. Ethical leaders respect others, or treat others as ends in themselves and never as
means to ends.
a. This requires treating other people’s decisions and values with respect,
and allowing them to be themselves.
b. They approach other people with a sense of their unconditional worth
and valuable individual differences.
c. Respect includes giving credence to others’ ideas and confirming them
as human beings.
ii. Ethical leaders serve others altruistically, placing their followers’ welfare
foremost in their plans through mentoring, empowerment, team building,
citizenship, and more.
a. Very similar to the ethical principle in health care of beneficence, which
holds that choices should benefit others in pursuing their legitimate
interests and goals.
b. In the past, the service principle has received a great deal of emphasis in
d. Servant leadership in particular has strong altruistic ethical overtones in
how it emphasizes that leaders should be attentive to the concerns of
their followers and should take care of them and nurture them.
e. In the business world, oaths of service and ethics are becoming
increasingly popular.
iii. Ethical leaders are just, making it a top priority to treat followers equally.
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a. No one should receive special treatment or special consideration except
is a direct product of the leader’s beliefs about justice and fairness.
c. Issues of fairness become problematic because there is always a limit on
goods and resources, and there is often competition for the limited
things available—conflicts around fairness are common for that reason.
g. Effort: In distributive justice, the amount and intensity of work that has
been done in the past and may be used to justify receipt of an
opportunity not extended to others.
iv. Ethical leaders are honest and truthful.
a. Dishonesty misrepresents reality, bringing with it objectionable
b. It also strains the relationships between all people, not just leaders—it
indicates that a dishonest person is willing to manipulate a relationship
in their own interest.
c. Being honest is not just about telling the truth. It has to do with being
e. For leaders in organizations, being honest means, “Do not promise what
you can’t deliver, do not misrepresent, do not hide behind spin–
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v. Ethical leaders build community by creating common goals that meet their own
and organizational purposes, but also consider the purposes agreed
upon/important to their followers.
a. This factor, concern for others, is the distinctive feature that delineates
authentic transformational leaders from pseudotransformational
leaders.
L. Culture and Ethical Leadership
i. Cultures vary widely in what they view as positive leadership attributes and in
what they define as ethical behavior of leaders.
ii. Ethical leadership dimensions of character/integrity, altruism, collective
motivation, and encouragement were endorsed across all cultures but that the
importance of each dimension varied by culture.
II. Strengths
A. Provides a body of timely research on ethical issues; people have been insisting on
higher levels of moral responsibility from their leaders for some decades now.
B. Suggests that ethics ought to be considered as an integral part of the broader domain of
leadership.
i. In the broader scope of leadership research, ethics are only integral to servant,
transformational, inclusive, and authentic leadership—a more ‘amoral’ approach
C. Ethical leadership benefits organizations.
i. When employees perceive that their leaders are ethical role models, there is less
deviance and more cooperation, resulting in higher performance and
organizational citizenship.
ii. Ethical leadership predicts the ethical climate of the organization.
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D. Followers exhibit ethical norms, positive job attitudes, and constructive ethical
behaviors because their leaders serve as role models when they behave ethically.
E. The measurement of ethical leadership has drastically improved.
III. Criticisms
A. In an early stage of development, with little traditional research.
i. Conceptually ill-defined and difficult to measure.
a. Some definitions are based on leader intentions, others on follower
B. Very little research on theoretical foundations of leadership ethics, rather than business
ethics.
i. Yukl et al (2013) suggest the construct domain of ethical leadership includes
C. In the past, leadership ethics relied on the writings of just a few people who have
penned essays and texts that were strongly influenced by their personal opinions about
the nature of leadership ethics and their view of the world.
i. Overwhelmingly anecdotal and untested with either quantitative or qualitative
research methods.
a. More empirical development is very recent.
D. Fourth, there are also generational differences in ethical perspectives, especially in
terms of millennials:
i. More individualistic than older employees:
a. Less likely to view the intensity of moral decisions in the same way.
ii. See work as less central to their lives:
a. Less likely to view ethical dilemmas at work as particularly problematic.
iii. More sensitive to extrinsic rewards:
IV. Application
A. Although issues of morality and leadership are discussed more often in society today,
these discussions have not resulted in a large number of programs in training and
development designed to teach ethical leadership.
i. While training programs may tangentially touch on managerial effectiveness,
few—if any—are directly focused on ethics and leadership.
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B. This research can be applied to people at all levels of organizations and in all walks of
life.
i. One cannot be a leader without being aware of and concerned about one’s own
values.
C. Ethical leadership reduces followers’ tendencies to morally disengage and then engage
in deviant behavior.
i. Moral disengagement, or is thinking that it is acceptable to take credit for
someone else’s work, can be minimized by role modeling proper behavior.
D. Managers and leaders can use the information in research on ethical leadership to
better understand themselves and strengthen their own leadership.