Ethical Leadership and Employees’ Accountability: A Way of Moving Organization Forward

Fr. Damianus Abun, SVD, Ph.D

Introduction

Many people have discussed leadership and its role in the life of an organization. The position of leadership is essential to the management and the direction of an organization. Organization cannot move forwards without its leadership. Thus, we talk about leadership, we talk about the direction. The direction of the organization is primary responsibility of a leader. His/her role is not just leading but leading must have a direction, a long-term vision to be achieved.  

In order to achieve long-term vision, a leader may apply different kind of leadership styles, leadership skills and values. Why do I include values? It is because of the very reason that if a leader has no moral or ethical values, then there is a tendency to ignore human aspect of the organization. These three areas are essential component of leadership if leadership is to be successful. In this case, a leader should know an appropriate style to be applied when he/she manages or leads people. However, such styles cannot work well without skills. A leader-manager should possess skills to execute his duties as a leader. Skills may include planning skills, communication skills, human relationship skills, etc. Many experts have claimed that leadership styles and skills do not guarantee the success of a leader if the leader has no moral values. These leadership styles and skills have to be exercised in an ethical manner. Therefore leader should be a moral leader to be effective.

There has been much work attempting to develop a general theory of leadership. Trait, transactional, transformational, path-goal, contingency and situational theories, all abound. These theoretical constructs seek to both define and explain leadership. There is no generally accepted or even widely disseminated theory of ethical leadership. There have very little research has been published on theoretical foundation of leadership ethics.  Without a theoretical foundation of support, the concept of ethical leadership is impotent to guide human behavior.

Many studies have been conducted along leadership styles, skills and still we have few studies related to ethical leadership and employee’s accountability. Thus, we need to support ethical leadership with theoretical foundation on ethics and leadership. The exercise of leadership has an effect on other people or employee’s behavior. Thus we try to examine using available literatures and studies to support the argument or our hypothesis that there is a relationship between ethical leadership and employees’ accountability.

Ethics

Ethics is derived from the Greek word: “ethos” which means “characteristic way of acting”, “habit”, “custom”. The Latin word is mos, mores which mean moral and morality. Thus, ethics studies the characteristics behaviour of man as endowed reason and free will. In other words, ethics is the science of the morality of human acts. It is the study of the behaviour of man as moral being, who is able to distinguish between right and wrong, good and bad.

Ethics and morality is sometimes overlapping. In ordinary conversation, the tendency is to separate the two with different meaning. But actually the two terms are for the same thing.  Morality is originated from Latin word: “moralitas” which means “manner, character, and proper behaviour. Thus morality refers to a code of conduct, by which human beings regulate their lives. Thus, when we talk of ethic, we actually talk about morality.

There are three different theories of morality: descriptive morality, normative morality and meta-ethics. Descriptive morality is a code of conduct endorsed and adhered to by society, group and individuals. Moral codes in this sense differ from society to society, within society, and among individuals. So, in its descriptive sense, morality is whatever a society, group or individual say it is. It is not consistent in their application (relativism (Articulo, 2004).  Thus, in its descriptive sense, morality refers to the codes of conduct regulating how people behave and without inquiring as to whether they ought to adhere to these codes because that is the primary concern of anthropologists, historians and sociologist but not philosophers.

While normative morality is a code of conduct that would be put forward by society and accepted by all rational people under certain idealized conditions. In other words, morality is the set of correct moral principles which ought to be adopted by all rational agents and applied to all rational agents beyond the borders. Precisely, this is the concern of moral philosophy which seeks, firstly, to formulate a set of principles with which all rational agents ought to comply. Secondly, to explain the reason why the system is ought to be adopted. It involves the question of validity of the code of conducts by which people adhere to.      

Under normative morality, there are three different ethics: virtue ethics, deontology and consequentialism ethics (Wikipedia free encyclopedia). Virtue ethics is actually a way of being; it is desirable moral characteristics that a moral or a virtuous   person embodies. Possessing those virtues is what makes a person moral, not his actions. An action is only an expression of his/her inner morality. While deontological ethics is referred to as duty ethics. It places an emphasis on adhering to ethical principles or duties. In this case, a moral agent ought to do his/her moral duty which is established by some kind of moral imperative (Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia). It is imperative that you ought to help the sick people who are nearly dead on other corner of the road. If deontological ethics emphasizes on doing one’s moral duty, consequentialism bases the morality of an action upon the consequence of the outcome. Instead of saying that one has a moral duty to help the sick people, the consequentialist would say we should help the sick people because it causes undesirable effect, the person will die. Thus, consequentialism determines what desirable outcome is. The greatest happiness of John Stuart Mill is one of the most common adopted criteria. The determinant of the desirable action is the net amount of happiness it brings, the number of people it brings to happiness, and the duration of the happiness.   

Unlike the normative ethics, meta-ethics does not propound any moral principles or code of conducts but it involves entirely in philosophical analysis. It is concerned with the nature of judgment of right and wrong and defining ethical terms such as “good” and “bad”. In other words, meta-ethics attempt to answer epistemological, logical and semantic questions relating to ethics. 

Leadership

Leadership is a process of how a person leads and influences people under his leadership move forward in achieving common objectives/goals. This definition is similar to Northouse's (2007, ) definition — Leadership is a process whereby an individual influences a group of individuals to achieve a common goal. Such definition is related to traditional definition of leadership. A traditional definition of leadership is an interpersonal influence directed toward the achievement of a goal or goals. Three important parts of this definition are the terms interpersonal, influence, and goal.
· Interpersonal means between persons. Thus, a leader has more than one person (group) to lead. Then, Influence is the power to affect others. While Goal is the end one strives to attain.  Basically, this traditional definition of leadership says that a leader influences more than one person toward a goal.

The above definition refers to different styles of leadership by which a person influence others to follow him/her to achieve a common goal. Different styles of leadership are described under behavioral theory of leadership. In the behavioral theory of leadership, leadership is determined by the action or what they are doing, not by “who they are” or their trait.

Consistent with such definition, thus leadership styles refers to styles that are being used by different leader on how to lead and influence their followers to attain the common objectives/goals. Looking into different styles, the new mid-century researchers sought more observable, measurable aspects of effective leadership rather than the metaphysical "qualities" of earlier trait theory (Yukl, 2006).  Thus the thrust of behavior theorists ignored inner traits (what leaders are) and focused upon the actual behavior of leaders, what they did, how they operated. Behavior theory's main form of research became typology, classifying leader behaviors into convenient "types" or "styles." As early as the 1920s when trait theory research was dominant, a dozen researchers identified behavior "types" such as

• Autocratic Style (authoritative, power-oriented)

• Persuasive Style (explains, sells, inspires)

• Democratic Style (consults, invites group participation)

• Intellectual Style (the expert, leads by superior knowledge)

• Executive Style (administrator, activist, systems).

Another influential project advancing behavior theory was the work of Rensis Likert's group at the University of Michigan. Likert's two major works in the 1960s provide full details about the Institute's work.   Summarizing it here, Likert fine-tuned by degrees the measurement of leadership styles using scales (such as his now common "l-to-9" scale); and also used four new style definitions instead of the LBDQ's two. He called them "Systems of Management 1, 2, 3 & 4," as follows:

• (1) Authoritative Exploitive

• (2) Authoritative Benevolent

• (3) Consultative

• (4) Participative.

Likert was convinced that future research would prove that his System 4 (the participative leader) was the one best leadership style. His influence was so great that in the 1960s, 1970s and even later, huge segments of the management training industry built massive training programs urging System 4 upon all managers.

The "participative" manager was "in," the "autocratic, authoritative" manager was "out." Despite clear cautions by Likert himself about past research voided by the possible situation factors ("contingency"), enthusiastic management trainers over-simplified System 4 as the new magic solution to painfully poor leadership in their organizations, "sold" the concept to top management and got the funds to teach and promote it.

This "one best leadership style" dominated many training departments and entire organizations for decades.There are many more leadership styles that can be presented all here; however, our purpose is not to present all leadership styles but to see what leadership is and how it relates to people. Leadership does not exist in vacuum but it relates to people and situation. Since leaders are exercising influence that emanates from their position, then ethical aspect of leadership must be the concern. In this case how leaders exercise their influence over their people is the ethical leadership concern.

Ethical Leadership

Given prominent ethical scandals in virtually every type of organization, the importance of an ethical dimension of leadership seems obvious. However, in order to understand this leadership phenomenon and its relationships with antecedents and outcomes, we must first know what “it” is. Philosophers have answered the question “what is ethical leadership” from a normative perspective, specifying how ethical leaders “ought” to behave (Ciulla, 2004). By contrast, our social scientific approach to the topic is focused more on describing ethical leadership as well as identifying its antecedents and consequences. Observers have long believed that personal traits such as integrity would be important to perceptions of leadership effectiveness and research has borne that out. For example, survey research has linked perceived leader effectiveness with perceptions of the leader's honesty, integrity, and trustworthiness (Den Hartog, et.al, 1999, Kirkpatrick and Locke, 1991, Kouzes & Posner, 1993, Posner & Schmidt, 1991)  And, cognitive trust (the exercise of care in work, being professional, dependable; MCAllister, 1995) has been associated with effective styles of leadership as well (Dirks and Ferrin, 2002). Building on this work, Trevino, et.al (2000, 2003) conducted exploratory research designed to understand what the term ethical leadership means to proximate observers of executives. Through structured interviews with twenty senior executives and twenty ethics/compliance officers in a variety of industries, the researchers asked informants to think about an ethical leader with whom they were familiar, and to answer broad questions about the characteristics, behaviors, and motives of that leader.

In line with ethical leadership, Heifetz(1994)  argued that ethical leadership has something to do with what leaders do and who they are.  In such a case, ethical leadership is concerned with leader behavior and their virtuousness. Their virtuousness will be reflected in the way they decide certain issues affecting people and organization. What choices leaders make and how they respond in a particular circumstance are informed and directed by their ethics.

His approach emphasizes how leaders help followers confront conflict and effect changes from conflict. It is about helping followers deal with conflicting values that emerge in rapidly changing work environments and social cultures. He understands leadership not as position power but it is an authority to mobilize people to face tough issues facing organization. Along that line, leader provides conducive environment in which there is a trust, nurturance and empathy. His duty is help followers in coping up with the change and their personal growth.   

In line with idea of Heifetz is the idea of  McGregor Burns (1978). His idea on ethical leadership is contained in his view on transformational leadership. Transformational leadership places a strong emphasis on followers' needs, values, and morals. Raising followers’ value and moral is not by teaching but by example. Thus, one of the characteristics of transformational leadership is idealized influence. Idealized influence means influences followers not by authority but by example. A leader leads his follower by his moral values. The followers emulate their leader because of his values.  And It is  also the responsibility of the leader to help followers assess their own values and needs in order to raise them to a higher level of functioning, to a level that will stress values such a liberty, justice, and equality.

Along with the concerns for followers, Robert K. Greenleef (1904–1990) developed a paradoxical approach to leadership called "Servant leadership" in 1970s. It has a strong altruistic ethical overtone and emphasizes that leaders should be attentive to concerns or their followers. He argued that leadership was bestowed on a person who is by nature a servant. The way an individual becomes a leader is by first being a servant. A servant leader focuses on the needs of the followers and helps them become more knowledgeable, freer, and more autonomous and more like servants themselves. As a servant leader, she/he has a social responsibility, to be concerned with the have-nots and to recognize them as equal stakeholders in the organization. In the exercise of leadership he places a great deal of emphasis on listening, empathy, and unconditional acceptance of others (Wikipedia free encyclopedia). Many of these ethical theories emphasize that the relationship between leader-follower is an "ethical" one and it s related to the "caring principle.

Principles of Ethical Leadership

Northouse (2007) has listed five principles of ethical leadership. Actually the origins of these can be traced back to Aristotle.    These principles provide a foundation for the development of sound ethical leadership. According to these principles, ethical leaders respect others, serve others, are just, are honest and build community. To be an ethical leader, one must be sensitive to the needs of others, treats others in ways that are just, care for others, treat others fairly, no cheating and lying and building a harmonious working relationship.

Accountability

Based on dictionary, accountability is the obligation of an individual or organization to account   for its activities, accept responsibility for them, and to disclose the results in a transparent manner. It also includes the responsibility for money other entrusted property (http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/accountability.html#ixzz22uudXrgX). Or accountability is taking or being assigned responsibility for something that you have done or something you are supposed to do.  An example of accountability is when an employee admits an error she made on a project. When an employee is given the task of making sure a project goes right and knows she will be blamed if it doesn't, she can also be said to have accountability for the project. (http://www.yourdictionary.com/accountability)

The concept of accountability has been discussed and expanded to many aspect of society. It includes political accountability, administrative accountability, financial accountability, ethical accountability, individual accountability and many more kinds of accountabilities.  However, for our purpose, we define aaccountability as a concept in Ethics and governance with several meanings. It is often used synonymously with such concepts as answerability, blameworthiness, liability, and other terms associated with the expectation of account-giving (Dystra (1939). As an aspect of governance, it has been central to discussions related to problems in the public sector, nonprofit and private (corporate) worlds. In leadership roles, accountability is the acknowledgment and assumption of responsibility for actions, products, decisions, and policies including the administration, governance, and implementation within the scope of the role or employment position and encompassing the obligation to report, explain and be answerable for resulting consequences (William, 2006).

Sinclair (1995) define accountability as a term related to governance, accountability has been difficult to define. It is frequently described as an account-giving relationship between individuals, e.g. "A is accountable to B when A is obliged to inform B about A’s (past or future) actions and decisions, to justify them, and to suffer punishment in the case of eventual misconduct". Accountability cannot exist without proper accounting practices; in other words, an absence of accounting means an absence of accountability.

Accountability is not just for the sake of reporting but it has an ethical aspect. Within an organization, the principles and practices of ethical accountability aim to improve both the internal standard of individual and group conduct as well as external factors, such as sustainable economic and ecologic strategies. Also, ethical accountability plays a progressively important role in academic fields, such as laboratory experiments and field research (Dykstra (1939).

Studies on Ethical Leadership and Accountability

After searching studies on ethical leadership and its relationship with employees’ accountability, the writer found that not many studies have been done along this line. However, several related studies have been found. Lenny Van den Akker, Leonie heres, Karin Lasthuizen & Frederique Six (2005) have conducted the study on the effect of different ethical leadership behaviors as perceived by the followers on the trust that those followers have in their leader. They explore ethical leadership along role modeling, demonstrating morally, securing ethical behavior, contextualizing success, transmitting organizational values and encouraging transparency and accountability. Using web based survey with nearly 500 respondents from the European business corporations; they found that most ethical behaviors of leaders are positively related to trust. Employees trust their leaders when they observe their leaders are exercising ethical leadership. In this case, they argue that the more leaders act in a way that followers feel is the appropriate ethical leaders’ behavior, the more leaders will be trusted. 

Flora Richards –Gustafson (2013), in her study on accountability and leadership integrity, found that leadership integrity is to be related to accountability. Accountability is being responsible or answerable for an action. Integrity leadership is a leadership behavior that makes a choice to commit to honesty before she/he is faced with choosing between right and wrong. According to her without value of integrity in the workplace, the culture within the company is at risk for poor organizational development. Employee’s accountability is affected by leadership behavior. If employees are not seeing leadership integrity exercised by their leaders, it could affect the accountability of employees toward their work.

In terms of commitment, the same study emphasizes that when employees and leaders active practice accountability and integrity in the workplace, they tend to feel more pride and ownership in the company. Managers, however, must set the stage for this to happen by treating all employees as valued members of a team who each have an integral role in helping the company achieve its goals. According to the Online Ethics Center for Engineering and Research, when employees feel pride in their place of employment because of the accountability and integrity practiced, they are more likely to work more efficiently, reduce risks and have better loss control.

In relations to organizational stability, the study revealed that mangers acting with integrity and practicing accountability are more likely to project a sense of stability to employees, which is important for employee retention. Along with a sense of stability, employees with bosses who have integrity and are accountable to those who work for them know that their managers will share company information regarding goals. When a company does not provide its employees with stability through accountability and integrity, there is a higher chance the culture will be one of fear and that every employee must fend for herself. Additionally, an unstable work environment may give employees the impression that their boss plays favorites, does not encourage professional growth and creates an environment that does not promote high performance and productivity.

Flora Richard explains that one of the best ways to lead is by example. If management allows its leaders to act without accountability and integrity, other employees will follow suit. The leaders of a company serve as the foundation of a company, so it is vital that this foundation is built on accountability and integrity. This is because a manager with weak values is more likely to produce employees who emulate his unwanted values. Conversely, a company supported with strong values will produce a culture that has an environment that performs well.

Conclusion

We have presented the ideas on leadership, accountability and ethical leadership and how it affects the accountability of employees toward their work. We can say that leadership is the exercise of influence over the followers but these influences must be good influence and exercised in ethical manner. Studies have proven the relationship between ethical leadership and accountability of employees. It shows that the more the leader is exercising ethical leadership,   the more the employee will be accountable to their works and results. If the manager/leader is honest, the more the employee will be honest in their work. Leading by example is a key to influence employees over their accountability. Indirectly such exercise bring the organization forward toward the attainment of its vision-mission and objective.

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