Ethical Leadership Styles of Future Managers in Central and Eastern European Countries

Introduction

Ethics gives diverse answers on what is ethical and what are the criteria of the “good behavior.” Therefore it is not easy to strictly define an ethical leadership either. However, the quality of our lives, at both the individual and organizational level, depends on the quality of moral norms and principles held by our leaders, and their keeping or breaking.

We assume that ethical leadership is crucial for the overall well-being of the individual as well as the organization and hence the whole society at a national as well as global level. As some authors noted, ethical leadership is important for successful implementation of corporate social responsibility (CSR) principles (Carroll, 1991, 1999; Buysee & Verbeke, 2003; Crane & Matten, 2004; Campbell, 2007) as well as for the overall ethical conduct of employees because of the impact of leaders, and especially of senior executives (Trevino, Brown, & Hartman, 2003), which they have on the behavior of their employees. To be able to fully implement CSR principles into daily operations in organizations, the behavior of management level has to be perceived by their followers as moral. Otherwise, the implementation process of CSR stops at the level of strategies and processes, not affecting the day-to-day behavior and values of employees. Furthermore, as earlier Schein indicated (Schein, 2009, 2010), the power of organizational culture is so pervasive, that if the leaders behave immorally, their subordinates will tend to follow their behavior, too.

Despite of the importance of ethical leadership for the long-term business success and effectiveness (for e.g., Caldwell et al., 2002; Bellingham, 2003; Búciová, 2010), the body of knowledge related to the ethical leadership concept is rather limited (Brown & Trevino, 2006). A whole new area is open to scientific examination in regard to key issues like: How to define an ethical leader? Is the concept of ethical leadership culturally endorsed? And if yes, what are the similarities and differences across cultures in the concept of ethical leadership? Furthermore, what are the links between ethical and effective leadership behavior? To have a starting point in regard to these complex questions, first influential concepts within the ethical leadership framework have to be investigated (some theoretical considerations regarding the ethical leadership have been investigated already in Remišová & Lašáková, 2011).