Toward a Framework of Leader Character in Organizations

• Author: Mark Reno,Lucas Monzani,Gerard H. Seijts,Alyson Byrne,Mary M. Crossan,Jeffrey Gandz
• Date: 01 November 2017
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/joms.12254
• Published date: 01 November 2017

Toward a Framework of Leader Character

in Organizations

Mary M. Crossan, Alyson Byrne, Gerard H. Seijts,

Mark Reno, Lucas Monzani and Jeffrey Gandz

Western University; Memorial University of Newfoundland; Western University; Western University;

Western University; Western University

ABSTRACT While the construct of character is well grounded in philosophy, ethics, and more

recently psychology, it lags in acceptance and legitimacy within management research and

mainstream practice. Our research seeks to remedy this through four contributions. First, we

offer a framework of leader character that provides rigor through a three-phase, multi-method

approach involving 1817 leaders, and relevance by using an engaged scholarship epistemology

to validate the framework with practicing leaders. This framework highlights the theoretical

underpinnings of the leader character model and articulates the character dimensions and

elements that operate in concert to promote effective leadership. Second, we bring leader

character into mainstream management research, extending the traditional competency and

interpersonal focus on leadership to embrace the foundational component of leader character.

In doing this, we articulate how leader character complements and strengthens several existing

theories of leadership. Third, we extend the virtues-based approach to ethical decision making

to the broader domain of judgement and decision making in support of pursuing individual

and organization effectiveness. Finally, we offer promising directions for future research on

leader character that will also serve the larger domain of leadership research.

Keywords: character, effectiveness, leadership, sustained excellence

INTRODUCTION

The scholarly account of character dates back millennia and yet debates about the

nature of ‘good character’ remain (Hackett and Wang, 2012). While progress has been

made in moving beyond the debates as evidenced by the work of Peterson and Seligman

(2004), and its recent incorporation into management research (e.g., Gentry et al., 2013;

Hannah and Avolio, 2011a; Quick and Wright, 2011; Sosik et al., 2012), there

Address for reprints: Mary M. Crossan, Ivey Business School, Western University, London, ON, Canada

N6A 3K7 (mcrossan@ivey.ca)

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C2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd and Society for the Advancement of Management Studies

Journal of Management Studies 54:7 November 2017

doi: 10.1111/joms.12254

continues to exist a significant gap between the scholarly account of character and the

understanding, legitimacy and application of character to leadership in the practice of

governance and management. Our line of research is anchored in virtuous character

and we adopt the definition of character as the habits of cognition, emotion, and behav-

ior that embody human excellence and produce social betterment (Bright et al., 2006;

Moore, 2005).

Our exploratory research seeks to address two fundamental questions: What are the

essential dimensions of leader character in organizational contexts? And how do these

dimensions relate to one another? We adopted a three-phase process to address these

questions, using an engaged scholarship approach. As advocated by Van de Ven (2007),

developing leadership theories that are accepted and actionable for the business context

may be better served when formulated through ‘engaged scholarship’, defined as ‘a par-

ticipative form of research for obtaining the different perspectives of key stakeholders in

studying complex problems. By involving others and leveraging their different kinds of

knowledge, engaged scholarship can produce knowledge that is more penetrating and

insightful than when scholars or practitioners work on the problems alone’ (2007, p. 9).

In the first phase we used a Q-sort methodology and focus groups with practitioners to

help define and refine the dimensions and constituent elements of leader character. The

second phase employed an on-line Q-sort with 874 leaders in two organizations to assess

the relative importance of the leader character elements. The third phase used a net-

work analysis to investigate the relationship between a 360-degree assessment of leader

character and performance measures with 833 leaders in a North American organiza-

tion which we then replicated in a sample of 64 leaders from two organizations in Latin

America.

Our research brings leader character into both mainstream management theory and

leadership practices through four core contributions. First, we offer a framework of

leader character that provides rigor through a three-phase, multi-method approach

involving 1817 leaders, and relevance by using an engaged scholarship epistemology

(Van de Ven, 2007) to validate the framework with practicing leaders. This framework

articulates the character dimensions and elements that operate in concert to promote

effective leadership in organizations. That the dimensions of character operate in con-

cert is an important redirection in the current research on character, which has been

evolving toward treating the dimensions of character as discrete constructs, in part

because of the analytical techniques used to study it. Second, we provide a robust frame-

work of leader character, which has been validated by practitioners through an engaged

scholarship approach, serving to bring leader character into mainstream leadership

research. We extend the traditional competency and interpersonal focus on leadership

to embrace the critical component of leader character (Seijts et al., 2015; Thompson

et al., 2008; Tsui, 2013). We articulate how leader character complements and strength-

ens several existing theories of behavioural approaches to leadership, responding to the

call for more integrative theorizing and research in the field of leadership (Avolio,

2007). Third, we extend the application of character research from a focus on wellbeing

and ethical decision making to the broader domain of judgement in support of pursuing

individual and organization effectiveness, specifically effectiveness that leads to sustained

excellence. We leverage and pivot the important concept of practical wisdom in

987Framework of Leader Character

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C2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd and Society for the Advancement of Management Studies

character research, to connect it to judgement and position judgement as a central

dimension of character. Finally, we identify the need for considerably more empirical

investigation to understand fully the theoretical underpinnings of what leader character

is and how it can be applied in organizational contexts. We offer promising directions

for future research on leader character, including preliminary insights into the structure

of leader character, the introduction of a network based analytical technique to explore

the structure, and an agenda for future research that will also serve the larger domain of

leadership research.

BRIDGING CHARACTER AND LEADERSHIP

Character Overview

Philosophers have debated the role of virtue and character in pursuit of the good life for

millennia, with early work rooted in Plato and Aristotle and more recent revivals attrib-

utable to Anscombe (1958), MacIntyre (2007), Solomon (1992), Kupperman (1995) and

Hursthouse (2001) amongst others. There is a substantial amount of philosophical

theory (Hursthouse, 2001; MacIntyre, 2007) and, to a lesser extent, psychological theory

on character (Peterson and Seligman, 2004) yet there is comparatively little actionable

research applied to leadership in organizational contexts (Crossan et al., 2015; Dyck

and Wong, 2010). As research on leader character is only recently emerging within the

management field, it is not surprising that there is little agreement on how to formally

define and apply character amongst practitioners (Conger and Hollenbeck, 2010). Han-

nah and Avolio (2011a,b), Wright and Quick (2011) and Quick and Wright (2011)

debated the theoretical underpinnings of leader character and concluded that leader

character is something that occurs within the leader; has a moral component that is

related but separate from values and personality; and can be developed in people. They

recognized in their discussion series that the work on leader character in the field of

management is only beginning and ongoing attention to important debates is necessary

(e.g., see Beadle et al., 2015; Sison and Ferrero, 2015) as we forge stronger links between

theory and practice.

As articulated, we align our research in virtuous character, where the habits of cogni-

tion, emotion, and behaviour, embody human excellence are able to produce social bet-

terment (Bright et al., 2006; Moore, 2005). Cameron (2011) described the important

differences between virtue and character: ‘The term virtue refers to singular attributes

that represent moral excellence ...Virtue is sometimes equated with character strengths

(Grant and Schwartz, 2011; Peterson and Seligman, 2004), but virtue and character

strengths are not synonymous. One can possess too much or too little of a strength, and

in doing so it may become a weakness or produce a negative outcome (as when too

much tolerance becomes spinelessness and too little tolerance becomes bigotry). Virtu-

ousness, on the other hand, cannot be exceeded’ (p. 27). Therefore, in further unpacking

Bright et al.’s (2006) definition of character, it is important to recognize that virtuous

character (henceforth, character) is an amalgam of virtues, personality traits and values

that enable excellence, as discussed by Seijts et al. (2015). Virtues refer to situationally

appropriate behaviours that are widely considered emblematic of good leadership.

988 M. M. Crossan et al.

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C2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd and Society for the Advancement of Management Studies