Ethical leadership's influence on employee compliance and organizational commitment

Ethical Leadership

Describe Each Study

There are some articles that deal with organizational ethical values and the leadership values. These articles are based on research and studies conducted in different areas of the world to find if there is a role of ethical leadership in productivity of organizations. There are many other positive effects of implementing organizational and leadership ethics in a corporation. Following is a brief analysis of each of the five given articles to find what each article studies and what did it find.

The Influence of Supervisory Behavioral Integrity on Intent to Comply with Organizational Ethical Standards and Organizational Commitment

Janie Harden Fritz, Naomi Bell O'Neil, Ann Marie Popp, Cory Williams, Ronald C. Arnett

The research problem, questions, or hypotheses: The research revolves around understanding expectations for appropriate employee business conduct. The research uses following hypothesis:

H1a. Supervisory behavioral integrity regarding appropriate business conduct directly and positively influences employee compliance with organizational expectations for appropriate business conduct.

H2a. Supervisory behavioral integrity regarding appropriate business conduct directly and positively influences employee commitment to the organization.

H2b. Organizational cynicism mediates the relationship between supervisory behavioral integrity regarding appropriate business conduct and employee commitment to the organization.

The research purpose: The purpose of the study is to examine cynicism as mediating factor in influencing communication of manager.

The type of design and elements of the design: The data for the research is collected from sample with 40 years of average age. There were total 57.4% men and 41.5% women in the sample and rest hid their gender. The sample participants had different jobs in various organizations. There were 49.7% lower level employees, 25.4% mid-level managers, 10.7% upper level managers.

Threats to validity and if and how they were addressed: The results could not be valid if the questionnaires were not properly formatted and the respondents failed to understand the purpose of research. The purpose was thus communicated in detail with the respondents.

The findings and their implications: The study found the influence of managerial behavioral integrity on employee intentions regarding compliance with expectations. The association of managerial communication and behavior is significantly related institutional outcomes. The managerial conduct affects organization's mission and awareness. The findings can be implemented to understand how employee commitment can be improved.

Article 2

Fostering Good Citizenship Through Ethical Leadership: Exploring the Moderating Role of Gender and Organizational Politics

Authors: Michele Kacmar and Daniel G. Bachrach, Kenneth J. Harris and Suzanne Zivnuska

The research problem, questions, or hypotheses: The research is based on hypothesis that Ethical leadership is positively associated with employee OCB.

The research purpose: The research is aimed at testing what relations are there in ethical leadership and person-focused and task-focused organizational citizenship.

The type of design and elements of the design: The research was carried out by asking questions. The sample was 83% supervisors with an average age of 47.3 years and organizational experience of average 13.2 years. There were 46% male and 54% females in the sample. In the subordinate sample, the average age of employees was 45.8 years and 10.5 years' experience. 39% subordinates were male and 61% were female.

Threats to validity and if and how they were addressed: There was a threat that cross-sectional data do could not permit to eliminate alternative explanations of relationships. The threat was dealt with by covering a bigger sample so that relationships are studied in detail. Yet the results are limited to public sector and need to be validated for private sector.

The findings and their implications: It was found that perception of organizational politics and ethical leadership are correlated. Thus this implies that for an effective and positive perception of the organizational leadership, there should be ethical leadership.

Article 3

An Empirical Study of Leader Ethical Values, Transformational and Transactional Leadership, and Follower Attitudes toward Corporate Social Responsibility

The research problem, questions, or hypotheses: The study is based on the following hypothesis:

H 1: Leaders with deontological ethical values will be rated by followers as demonstrating transformational leadership.

H 2: Leader teleological ethical values will be rated by followers as demonstrating

Transactional leadership.

H3: Transformational leadership will be positively associated with follower valuing of Corporate social responsibility

The research purpose: The purpose of study was to find how transformational leadership is associated with the beliefs of followers.

The type of design and elements of the design: Questions were asked to the sample of 580 individuals out of which 122 were leaders and 458 were followers in 97 different organizations. There were 18 leaders from aerospace, 18 from government services, 14 professional services officers, and 13 from education. In the sample, 59% organizations were for-profit, 22% publicly traded, 58.2% private and 19.7% government. 17% leaders were frontline managers, 36% project team leaders, 19.7% middle managers and 35% top level managers.

Threats to validity and if and how they were addressed: There was a risk that involving too many sectors could not offer a valid specialized result but it did offer a generalized result. The behavior was studies in a range of leaders and followers thus validating results.

The findings and their implications: The study helped find implications for organizations and management education programs. The role of organization to encourage formal assessment of the leader's ethical values and maintaining healthy relationships is evident. The study suggests that the leaders face challenge of development and they should focus to improve key ethical values.

Article 4

Actions Speak Louder Than Words the Benefits of Ethical Behaviors of Leaders

Author: Tanner, C., Brugger, A., Schie, S.V., Lebherz, C.

The research problem, questions, or hypotheses: Questions were asked regarding range

Part 2. How you might conduct the research study differently

I am selecting the article number five "Impact of corporate ethical values on ethical leadership and employee performance" by Sabir, M.S., Iqbal, J.J., Rehman, K., Shah, K.A. And Yameen; M. The article studies the corporate ethical values, ethical leadership and employee performance. I would have used a slightly different and effective methodology for conducting the research.

The research questions: The research in the article explored answers to ethical behaviors and their influence on employee performance. Besides corporate ethical values and the ethical values of a leader, I would have also studied the impact of employees own values on his performance. Also I would have included questions like:

a. Do ethical leadership values influence ethical subordinate values?

b. Is the leader's ethical behavior's influence on employee temporary or permanent?

c. Is the employee performance marginally or highly affected form leader's temporary unethical behavior

The research purpose: The purpose of my study would have been basically same i.e. To find the relationship between employee's performance and corporate ethical values and ethical leadership values. However, I would have also studied what if the successor leadership fails to demonstrate same ethical leadership values.

Type of design and elements of the design: I believe that the questionnaires are normally designed well yet they need to be customized according to the environment of country and the organizations. Thus, I would have first interviewed leaders and corporate managers to find what questions to include in my research. Only after that I would have finalized my questionnaires. The sample size taken by Sabir et. al. is very small in my opinion. I believe when conducting a nationwide study in different sectors, the sample size of 190 is too small that ends up in only 150 valid questionnaires. I would have surveyed at least 1000 individuals 500 from public and 500 form private sector. I would have ensured that there is 50% of each gender approximately and that no age group is neglected. The research had about 14% females and I think this was too small.

The strengths and weaknesses of your envisioned design and methods: There are many strengths and weaknesses of the research design that I proposed. First of all it is not easy to get interviews from top leaders and managers without having properly designed questions. Thus it requires making formal list of questions even before making the final questionnaire thus the amount of required effort increases. Then, the number of questionnaires that I propose i.e. 1000 will require a few months to be collected in valid and usable form. Often online questionnaires expire early thus personally administered questioners work best in countries where IT is in developing phase in public sector and English is not the first language of natives.

Quantitative: Threats to validity and how your design will address them: As mentioned earlier, the countries where English is not the first language of employees and public employees are often on elder age, the online or postal surveys can be ignored. The surveys can use personally administered questionnaires and the researcher will use more time and energy to collect feedback. This will also reduce the threat of loss of questionnaires.

Quantitative: The constructs you will measure and what you will do in order to determine how to operationalize them: The quantitative measures that can help research might include close supervision as well as assistance in understanding and filling questions. This should however not influence their answers.

Qualitative: your means of ensuring the quality of your findings: The data collected from different cities of a big country can offer a wide range of answers that are often contradictory and not generalizable. Thus, I will ensure that the questions are orally translated into native languages if necessary so that no incorrect data contaminates findings. Secondly, the data will be assessed using tools of statistics. The data will be collected by one group, assessed by another and interpreted by a third group. Thus the final group will not know which data belongs to which organization or city so that there is no biasness that could manipulate data in favor of one organization, sector or city.

Justification for why your chosen design and methods are more appropriate for your research question than alternatives you have considered: The methods that I have chosen for research eliminate the risks of biasness and favors thus it can be more effective. Also this design involves data from a wide variety of sectors and areas thus including response from diverse not concentrated area. Else, the results from only a couple of cities would mean studying ethical influences only on the employees of a particular area.

The diversity in organizations is often low within a single city in Pakistan. Localized areas have same culture and may offer same response. Yet this does not mean there is no diversity. Thus conducting a research on about a dozen cities broadens the canvas of research. This will slightly move the average values in the sample but there will be a wider window from which the feedback will be collected. The researchers would be planned such that no researchers will be allowed to conduct or supervise study in his own organization or city so that the elements that make the results impure are controlled.

Your methods of data analysis: I like to analysis data by using a variety of methods. First of all I analyses the data by putting it in the excel sheet to find simple mean, median, mode of data. This gives and overview about the data collected. After that I like to analyses data separately in the groups. Each group represents different city. This helps find average age of employee in a city and the gender proportion in each city. Thus after conducting the basic analysis on the data, I will move forward to next step of deeply analyzing data by using statistical methods of regression, correlation, standard deviation. I will also use the probability test to find the possibility of expected behavior and expected performance of the employee. The data analysis might reveal that there are separate levels of performance considered productive in public and private sector. Thus, at the end, I would like to categorize data on the basis of sectors too. This means besides offering an overall result, my research would offer a detailed view by telling trends among genders, cities and industries regarding employee performance and corporate ethical values and leadership ethical values. I believe a detailed view of a study is far better than an overall view.

How the data you collect will enable you to answer your research question and contribute to theory?

The collected data only supports the purpose of study if it is collected with a proper planning and in a proper format. The data that I will collect for my study will be very helpful since it will be collected from a bigger sample and will offer answers to relevant questions. These questions will be based on extensive primary and secondary research. The facts-based data supports the studies and help generalize the results. When data is available, there is no need to base the answers on suppositions or assumptions of the researchers. The assumption part is over in hypothesis development. Thus the answers in the data either support or oppose the hypothesis and develop concluding statements after proper analysis.

Part 3. Learning Outcomes: Apply relevant theory and research

The research offered many learning outcomes. It tells us about leadership values and their importance, the organizational culture and values and their influence on employee productivity. I learned that the employee performance is a sum of infinite number of variables. It is not employee's skills, training, education and experience that helps him perform well but the behavior and ethical values of the leader (supervisor or boss) also play a vital role in encouraging employee to perform well (Fritz, O'Neil, Popp, Williams, and Arnett, 2013). Employees may outperform in absence of ethical leader behavior for few days but never forever. Also I am convinced after the critical analysis of articles that the leader's ethical behavior is not his personal matter rather it affects all the employees he supervises. An ethical behavior can motivate while an unethical behavior can discourage employees for showing good performance.

The articles taught me that the leadership style is much more beyond a matter of choice and personality (Groves, and LaRocca, 2011). A style of leadership that suites a corporation are a huge asset. This can help offer direction to the subordinates that ensure that efforts produce results. I also learnt that what cannot be guaranteed by close monitoring and security cameras can be ensured by ethical leadership style. And ethical culture of an organization would require lesser checks since the employees will not find ways to escape from work rather they would do best they can (Kacmar, Bachrach, Kenneth, Harris and Zivnuska, 2011). The articles suggested that even in the economies that complain of corruption and low productivity, they experience employees' high productivity given corporate ethical values and ethical leadership. The trust that develops as a result of ethical practices makes many things better. The employee productivity can be increased using many techniques like training, motivating sessions, participation, employee empowerment etc. But the most effective and long lasting technique is to implement ethical practices in the organization at management and leadership level first so that the employees would follow the footsteps of the leader (Sabir, Iqbal, Rehman, Shah, and Yameen, 2012).

I learnt that where ever an organization operates and whatever is the educational or ethical background of employees of an organization, they are positively affected by the ethical values of the organization and ethical behavior of the leader. Thus every organization should ensure ethical values, behaviors and practices.