Ethical Leadership Theories

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y examined how leaders in the public sector utilize the principles of social learning to be intentional in shaping employees’ ethical conduct. This proposed study examined how leaders can help employees to attend to, retain, recall, and imitate a leader’s ethical behavior in the workplace. The literature review covered leadership to include ethical leadership, as well as the consequences of unethical leadership. In order to understand how a leader can intentionally shape the behavior of employees, it is necessary to discuss a theoretical framework to be used as the basis for this study. Social learning theory has been used in many leadership studies in the context of the workplace (Tittle, Antonaccio, & Botchkovar, 2012). In this study, …show more content…

Leadership has roots that can be traced to the beginning of civilization and has evolved over time (Stone & Patterson, 2005). Research concerning leadership existed before the study of business and organizations because it assists in the understanding of the conduct of people (Christensen, Makay, & Whetton, 2014). Historically, traditional empirical research gives credit to formal leaders for developing creative strategies that impact organizations (Christensen et al., 2014). In studies prior to the 1900s autocratic (individuals who made decisions without consultation) and charismatic individuals such as politicians, religious personnel, and military personnel were seen as leaders (Boneau & Thompson, …show more content…

Twenty-first century researchers believe that leaders need to focus on talent acquisition, creativity and innovation, and leading effective change in order to generate new products, improve services, discover unconventional revenue streams, and coach others in order to maintain a competitive advantage (Boneau & Thompson, 2013). However, for the past 30 years, the leadership styles that have been dominant in research are transactional and transformational leadership (Keskes, 2014).
Transactional leadership. Transactional leadership is described as managerial leadership because it emphasizes the supervisory role, as well as the organization and group’s performance (Odumeru & Ifeanyi, 2013). Transactional leadership is also described as an exchange of the leader’s interest and followers’ expectations involving commitment, respect, and trust (Paracha, Qamar, Mirza, Hassan, & Waqas,