School heads’ ethical leadership styles: a case study of selected Gweru district schools in Zimbabwe

Abstract

The subjectivity of ethics in leadership makes ethical decision-making a challenge for school heads, particularly when faced with ethical dilemmas. Informed by Ethical Leadership theory. A mixed methods research design was used to explore ethical leadership styles used by school heads when confronted with ethical dilemmas with a view of profiling school heads’ ethical leadership styles and common sources of ethical dilemmas. An Ethical Leadership Style Questionnaire (ELSQ) and semi-structured interviews were used to generate data from 50 primary and secondary school heads in the Gweru district in the Midlands province of Zimbabwe. The findings of the study were that school heads had a high preference for using duty ethics more than the other styles. Care ethics, Justice Ethics, utilitarian ethics virtue ethics, altruism ethics, and egoism ethics followed respectively. Sources of ethical dilemmas were found to be based on inequality issues in schools, dishonesty, personal conflict, and bullying. It was concluded that school heads had a preferred ethical leadership style. There are more ethical leadership styles that school heads use than previously profiled. It is recommended that school heads must be staff-developed in ethical leadership and decision-making to improve their leadership effectiveness.

Keywords

• leadership
• ethics
• decision-making
• ethical leadership
• ethical dilemma