Ethical leadership
From Western foundation to Chinese context
Mainstream ethical leadership studies largely adopt
Brown, Trevino, and Harrison’s (2005) conceptualization
and operationalization. Ethical leadership has been found to predict positive
individual and organizational outcomes. An examination of the mainstream
literature reveals several weaknesses that include the lack of a well-developed
theoretical framework, the marginalized role of communication in leadership
processes, and a low correspondence between conceptualization and
operationalization. In addition to these weaknesses, Chinese ethical leadership
studies meet additional challenges regarding the relative impacts of
universality and cultural specificity. The Chinese literature consists of
empirical research adopting the mainstream Western ethical leadership construct,
point-of-view articles stressing Chinese cultural roots, and research
considering both universal and cultural characteristics. This paper argues that
future development in Chinese ethical leadership research can begin by
conceiving a construct model that denotes communication as a key leadership
behavior, explicates the relative importance of universal versus cultural
influences, and defines key cultural components.
Article outline
- The mainstream Western foundation of ethical leadership
- The conceptualization of ethical leadership
- Theoretical propositions
- The operationalization of ethical leadership
- The influence process and outcomes
- The communication aspect of ethical leadership
- Culture and ethical leadership
- Chinese ethical leadership
- Ethical leadership examined as a mainstream construct
- Chinese culture-based ethical leadership
- Ethical leadership co-influenced by universal and cultural properties
- Evaluation of the three approaches to Chinese ethical leadership
- Future development in Chinese ethical leadership studies
- Construct model development
- Cultural specificity development
- Leadership communication behavior development
- Operationalization development
- Applications in Chinese organizations
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