Un) Ethical Leadership and Identity: The Main

¶ … Un) Ethical Leadership and Identity:

The main topic of the article is to identify and comment on the major findings originating from the collective initiatives on the issue of leadership, ethics, and identity. In order to explore this special issue, the article highlights various aspects including definitional advancements, processes in ethical leadership, and the results and moderating factors of ethical leadership. As part of the author's initiatives to explore the topic in detail, he has started by a comprehensive definition of ethical and unethical leadership. Based on an analysis of the article and the author's writing style, he is writing to both academic and professional audience. The author communicates what has been learned and need for future considerations with regard to ethical and unethical leadership and identity.

Notably, Hunter (2012) has solicited various manuscripts focusing on leadership, ethics, and identity in order to develop his special issue (p. 79). As a special issue based on the collected articles, he identifies and state the unique contributions of each of the efforts of the specific contributors to the issue. In this regard, he touches on what every manuscript states about the significant aspects and topics within the special issue. Some of the articles used include one on ethical leadership where unethical leadership has been discussed in relation to issues like spiritual leadership, authentic leadership, and transformational leadership. While the other article also focuses on unethical leadership, it analyzes supervisor's behavior with regards to violating the moral standards through abusive supervision.

In summary, ethical leadership can be defined as a moving target whereby what constitutes ethical leadership may differ at one point in time by both time frame and identity. Conceptual growth in each of the articles aims at not only identifying important end results of ethical leadership, but also the factors driving the occurrence of it as well as the actions it comprises. In contrast, unethical leadership is described as behaviors by supervisors that infringe moral standards. As a result, the elements that constitute ethical leadership in a given time may differ in the entity and timeframe under consideration. Ethical and unethical leadership are strange as an individual may be left wondering whether to focus on promoting ethical leadership or identifying and stopping unethical leadership or both. An understanding of ethical or unethical leadership requires and analysis of the activities, processes, and mechanisms that constitute ethical leadership. However, understanding these phenomena is not only important in modern leadership but also has various complexities, which have resulted in the need for various studies on the topic. Despite of the complexities, ethical leadership is cited as an important aspect because it contributes to greater employee initiative and lessened counter-productive behaviors.

One of the strengths of the article is that it identifies the effect of ethical and unethical leadership on organizational outcomes in relation to employee initiative and work behaviors. Secondly, the article has enabled leaders to be aware of their rights and values and choose to express them when in need. However, it contains some weaknesses such as it does not address the issue of leader identity, which is totally neglected and not highlighted resulting in the ignorance of the role of identity in shaping ethical decision-making. The other weakness is that the aspects addressed on the article are mainly generated from the previous manuscripts on the same topic rather than conducting research on the question.