Blog XIV: Fostering ethical workplace cultures

Ethical leadership implies that leaders have the knowledge to differentiate between right and wrong and also have the desire develop this moral compass within their followers (BuildingCapacity, 2013). In doing so, ethical leaders strive to promote a culture of adherence to moral codes within their organizations.  

For leaders to achieve this, they themselves have to be knowledgeable of ethical dilemmas which could arise from employee activities and possess a toolkit of ethical perspectives to apply. A great perspective for leaders to adopt as they build the organization’s ethical climate is transformational leadership.

Transformational leadership involves transforming the ethics, morals, and goals of the people involved with the leader and influencing these people to exceed expectations of them. Wang et al. (2011) meta-analysis of transformational leadership shows that it’s positively related to individual, group, and organizational preformance. Transformational leaders can foster the ethical development and preformance of their followers through idealized influence, or positively role-modelling ethical behaviour (Wang et al., 2011). Once a personalized ethical code or standard has been set for the organization, the ethical transformational leader sets visible examples for followers to abide by. Examples of this can include publicly admitting mistakes made by the leadership team to promote ethical integrity amongst employees.

In my organization, one recommendation I can make to promote a strong ethical climate would be to increase transparency of organizational expenditures. Since the organization I work for is government-based, transparency is important for the public to know how public funds are being used. Alongside transparency, public information should also be easily accessible and understandable. From an employee perspective, financial transparency is also important because it helps us understand the conditions that management must work with. In doing this, the department can foster collaboration in the decision-making or problem solving process and also cultivate the intellectual development of followers.

References

BuildingCapactiy. (2013, March 29). What is Ethical Leadership? [Video File]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/ks2QGoIq5nA

Wang, G., Oh, I., Courtright, S. H., & Colbert, A. E. (2011). Transformational leadership and performance across criteria and levels: A meta-analytic review of 25 years of research. Los Angeles, CA: SAGE Publications. doi:10.1177/1059601111401017