South African Journal of Business Management (Jun 2005)

Promoting ethical follower behaviour through leadership of ethics: The development of the ethical leadership inventory (ELI)

  • H. Spangenberg,
  • C. C. Theron

DOI
https://doi.org/10.4102/sajbm.v36i2.623
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 36, no. 2
pp. 1 – 18

Abstract

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The Centre of Leadership Studies developed a model that defines and describes leadership behaviour required for creating an ethical and high performing organisation. Purposefully building an ethical organisational environment is a prerequisite for ethical organisational behaviour. To be an ethical high performance leader, a person must be both an effective leader and a leader of ethics. The purpose of this study is to develop a 360° instrument that can be used to assess the quality of ethical leadership of middle, senior and executive managers in public, private and not-for-profit organisations. The results reported here provide reasonable support for the use of the ELI. The possibility of causal influences existing amongst specific first-order leadership dimensions, however, needs to be investigated.