Ethical Leadership in Cross-Culture

Abstract

The existing ethical leadership literature reflects a Western-based private sector perspective, implying a compliance-oriented view of ethical leadership. Developing a more comprehensive understanding of how ethical leadership is viewed in the Western and Eastern cultural clusters, as well as the private and public sectors, is crucial because today's leaders must lead ethically across cultures and sectors more and more. Addressing this issue, the present study explores how employees from Eastern cultures define ethical leadership and which characteristics they associate with ethical leaders. A qualitative study was conducted through interviews this study conducted 10 confidential individual interviews with leaders and employees in a public organization in Jordan. The findings indicate that while there may be similarities with Western perspectives on ethical leadership such as honesty; respect, fairness, and justice, there are also distinct characteristics and priorities that reflect the unique socio-cultural context of the region like religiosity, accountability, responsibility, and trustworthiness.

Keywords

• Ethics
• Ethical leadership
• cross-culture
• organizational culture