What Makes a Leader Unethical?

Abstract

This study aims to find out the answer “what makes a leader unethical”? Building upon the premise of existing literature, it mainly incorporates the individual-level factors such as individual personality, organizational ethical climate as organizational factor, and sociocultural factors such as high in-group collectivism, high power distance and short terms orientation and determine their effects on leader’s unethical behaviors. In addition to the direct effects, this study also proposes the moderating effects of organizational ethical climate and socio-cultural factors on the relationship between manager’s personality and manager’s tendency to engage in unethical behaviors. Data will be gathered from employees that are working in public sector organizations and their perceptions about their leader’s personality, organizational ethical climate and their orientation towards socio-cultural factors will be obtained. The tests for convergent and discriminant validity and reliability will be employed through measurement model. SPSS and SMART-PLS programs have been used for analyzing data normality, measurement model and structural equation model. The proposed hypotheses will be tested by constructing the structural models. Based on the results, policy implications would be drawn to reduce the unethical behaviors in organizations.