Ethical leadership or “please” leadership?

The first thing that jumped into my mind when I heard about ethical leadership was a very famous experiment about peer pressure in social psychology. Solomon Asch (1950) was curious about how does peer pressure interact with commands from legitimate authority. The main conclusion of this experiment result was that the degree to which an individual’s own opinions are influenced by those of a majority group. In terms of conformity in business context, the term which requires us to pay more attention on should be the leadership. It may make unexpected effect on the organization, even all the employees inside.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00f8mzrwith

Based on the article of the attached statement on assignment briefing, the results showed the ethical leadership are positively related to organizational trust, satisfaction, and effectiveness (Craige, Paul, & Laurie, 2012), They supported the definition of ethical leadership by Brown, Trevino, and Harrison (2005), in this definition the leadership seems that focus on the small connection between leaders and followers, which may lead to a conclusion that direct supervisors have more influence on employees than CEOs (Craige, Paul, & Laurie, 2012). It may due to the closeness between leaders and followers, no much concern about the difference between direct supervisors and CEOs which means the CEOs could have more influence on followers. Ellis and Shockley-Zalabak (2001) supported this hypothesis that the top manager has strongest influence on followers. Which factors will be the key factor to make clear of this conflict may need more study. One hypothesis may be the closeness between leaders and followers, David Kenny, the president of Akamai Technologies, applied similar tactics called “connector” to connect diverse social worlds together (Herminia & Morten, 2011). This example may partly indicate the importance of closeness rather than direct or indirect position. Besides, although the statement described the function of communication but they haven’t explained the condition of communication, which may divide into great communication or poor communication.

At this extent, communication became another very important element which influences leadership a lot. According to Edward, effective communication contribute to build a close relationship, which means a sense of intimate may be the factor behind the consist of ethical leadership. Next time may consider the two-level of trust such as close-trust, distant-rust and two-level of satisfaction like close-satisfaction, distant satisfaction. Then test the correlation between ethical leadership and these factors.

However, as an ethical leader was proved to have a positive effect on work effectiveness will leaders ingratiate themselves with followers may extremely expand the positive effect? According to Craige, Paul, and Laurie (2012), trust, satisfaction and effectiveness are highly correlated. What if the leader try to satisfy followers and obtain more trust, will the effectiveness improve but the leader still stay unethical? For instance, Larry Ellison, unethical towards not only competitors also employees but Oracle still achieve great success. For instance, he demanded at least 100 percent sales growth of software for a period. These stressful factors are seems against the founding but the reward to employees are huge as well. Under this condition, even the unethical leaders can achieve high effectiveness. From these views, increasing the closeness may still the important factor to make a similar effect on followers and organizations, which is regardless of ethical or unethical.

In sum, the following study better figure out the confound effect from variables like closeness or rewards refer to ethical leadership. I personally believe the hypothesis that ingratiation towards followers will lead to a similar effect with ethical leadership. A very persuasive example is the culture in IBM, especially at the beginning of its founding period. The Watson family defined the origin culture in the company from their personal experience. They were decent, reliable, aspiring and smart. Although it was a kind of cult-like culture as the employees’ actions followed by leaders. IBM got a very succeed progress within their leader. The organization made a substantial profit and set up a good image across the world. On the other side, the 2008 San Lu milk scandal was a serious scandal in China. The company added something could poison infants into milk powder. When exposed to public, it destroyed the reputation and image of Chinese food exports and the trust between customers. It made more than 11 countries cancelled imports of dairy products from China and customers have to buy expensive dairy products overseas as no choices for them from local. (Zhuang,2008). It seems not only related to the leaders of dairy company, but also associated with the leaders of the quality supervision agency. The non-ethical leadership has strongly negative influences to customers and it’s really hard to recover once the relationship broken.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7720404.stm

Reference:

Craig E. Johnson, Paul M. Shelton, & Laurie Yates. (2012)  Ethical Leadership and Organizational Trust, Satisfaction, and Effectiveness. Thomas Edison State College 4(1), 3-19.

Mullins, L. and Christy, G. (2013) Management Et Organisational Behaviour. Harlow: Pearson

Inc.com, (2015) Measure (And Reward) Ethical Behavior [online] available from <http://www.inc.com/jeffrey-pfeffer/measure-and-reward-ethical-behavior.html&gt; [10 June 2015]

2015, 1. (2015) 10 Most Ethical Ceos Of 2015 | Onlinemba.Com [online] available from <http://www.onlinemba.com/blog/10-most-ethical-ceos-in-corporate-america/&gt; [9 June 2015]

ZHUANG, S. (2008) Formula For Disaster [online] available from <http://www.economist.com/node/12262271&gt; [20 June 2015]