How to hire and promote ethical leaders.

• Author: Callison, Kori
• Position: LEADERSHIP

For many years organizations have assumed that leaders who are proficient at their jobs would also display a strong ethical compass; however, following high profile scandals at organizations, such as Enron and Penn State, this does not necessarily seem to be the case. Ethics has been elevated from a desirable feature a leader should possess to a necessary attribute. This has led both researchers and practitioners to ask some very fundamental questions about the nature of ethics, what behaviors an ethical leader displays, antecedents and outcomes related to ethical leadership, and how we can hire and promote these leaders.

Components of Ethical Leadership

Research published in 2006 by Michael E. Brown at the Sam and Irene Black School of Business, Pennsylvania State University-Erie and Linda K. Trevino at the Smeal College of Business, Pennsylvania State University-University Park indicates that there seems to be two components of ethical leadership: the moral person (leaders who are honest, trustworthy, and fair) and the moral manager (leaders who actively use ethics as a core component of their leadership style).

Moral managers utilize the reward system to reinforce ethical behavior and punish unethical behavior, serve as a role model for what ethical behavior is expected to look like within the organization, and actively engage their subordinates in discussions about ethically ambiguous situations or scenarios.

Research indicates that ethical leadership is related to employee satisfaction, perceptions of leader effectiveness, and motivation to work hard.

Considerations for New Employees

Organizations that are concerned with finding, developing, and nurturing ethical leaders have several considerations. One way to hire ethical leaders is to incorporate ethics into the selection process. This could be accomplished in several different ways.

First, job descriptions should list ethics as an important part of the selection criteria. Ethical leaders prefer to work in an organization that values and rewards such behavior. Additionally, this may allow unethical leaders to self-select out of the hiring process.

Second, as part of a structured interview, interviewers can ask both behavioral description questions (e.g., "Tell me about a time that you were involved in an unethical situation.") and situational questions (e.g., "A subordinate comes to you and reports that another coworker seems to be changing company documents to cover unethical...